


The Phoenix Flame

by alatarmaia4



Series: Legendary [1]
Category: Princess Bride (1987), The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, bc unfortunately they ended up not being in it very much, crap now i need to do another version with carey and killian, just like a ton of taz protags and minor antagonists, some minor lesbians went untagged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-02 08:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11505201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alatarmaia4/pseuds/alatarmaia4
Summary: Neverwinter teeters on the brink of civil war. Freshly crowned King Kalen faces down a homegrown rebellion of common folk, and concocts a scheme involving a largely clueless Barry Bluejeans to try to salvage his reputation. However, Barry is almost immediately kidnapped by a group of unusually familiar mercenaries. Who will come to his rescue?Enter for a high-stakes, mostly high-fantasy tale of romance, adventure, questionable magical feats, and a cast with at least half the members being presumed dead at some point for some period of time. A TAZ/Princess Bride fusion.





	1. In Which A Narrative Is Introduced

**Author's Note:**

> this was prompted by a tumblr discussion between fandomhop and trainwreckgenerator I stumbled upon and I never looked back. godspeed, reader.
> 
> prior knowledge of the princess bride isn't required, and I honestly think this story might be more fun without it.

Angus McDonald, boy detective, hated being sick.

    It happened that he didn’t get sick very often; he was a responsible boy, the kind who always washed his hands when the notices in the bathroom said to, and didn’t pick his nose unless he was very, very bored. So it was to most people’s surprise that at the end of winter he caught a particularly nasty bout of ‘flu that had been going around, and was bedridden for a week or two. He handily recovered, but irritating symptoms like nausea and headaches persisted, and his grandfather insisted that he remain largely bedridden for what seemed to Angus like _far_ too long to be reasonable. So it was that when his aunt Lucretia came to visit, he was grumpier than usual and in no state to properly appreciate the occasion.

    Angus’s aunt Lucretia was not actually his aunt. For starters, she was related to neither his father nor his mother in any meaningful way. What she _did_ lay claim to was a very close friendship with Angus’s grandfather, and Angus many years ago had decided to call her his aunt and never changed his mind.

    Not that Lucretia visited often enough for a familial title to really become necessary. Angus was not entirely sure _what_ his aunt did for a living, but whatever it was it involved a lot of travel and staying for long periods of time in faraway lands, and occasionally a gift of some foreign trinket for him when she came back. This time, when she entered his room, she had only a book in her hand.

    Angus, propped up against many comfortable pillows, perked up slightly despite himself. “Aunt Lucretia? What are you doing here?”

    “I came to say hello,” said Lucretia, taking the chair from his desk and arranging it so she could sit close to him. “Your grandfather told me you’ve been very sick.”

    Angus slouched at the reminder. His headache seemed to pound harder. “Yeah. It’s really bad. But I’m all better now!”

    “So I also heard.” Lucretia smiled, and raised the book. It was, Angus saw, handsomely bound in blue leather, and the back cover bore a few small ink stains, as might have been left by an errant, stained finger pressing down on the wrong spot. “I have no gift for you, I’m afraid, but I do have a very interesting story. I thought you might like it. It will at least take your mind off other things.”

    “Is it a mystery?” Angus asked eagerly. He loved mysteries, but he’d read and reread all his Caleb Cleveland novels, and besides his bookshelf was too far away to bother getting up and going over to it. His grandfather would probably have a conniption (a word he had learned from the dictionary, before he had gotten bored and stopped halfway through D, having skipped through most of A, B, and C anyway).

    “No, not really. It’s mostly a romance.”

    At _that,_ Angus sank even further down. “I don’t think a romance is really my thing, aunt Lucretia.”

    “I think you’ll like it anyhow,” Lucretia said. “It’s a very important story to know, in my mind. Why don’t I just read the beginning, and you can see what you think of it?”

    Reluctantly, Angus nodded. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do. “Okay,” he said, “but it better be the _good_ kind of romance.”

    “I’m sure it will meet your standards in some fashion,” Lucretia said agreeably, and opened the book. There was, Angus noted, no title on the front, and a glimpse of the pages told him that it had been written by hand. It had to be a very old book, then; the Caleb Cleveland novels were new enough that they’d been printed on a press. “The story begins in Faerûn, not very far from here.”

* * *

    Elves, as one might expect, had always had a propensity for elegance and luxury. Though there are undoubtedly poor elves, somewhere in the world, outside of elvish enclaves individuals often set up with banking practices, or minor lordships and a small estate in a nice isolated county. Therefore it was very odd for anyone who might stumble across the little farm to realize that it was run by an elvish woman and two elvish children - twins, in fact, which was rarer than anything among elves.

    The woman, Anais, who was in fact the aunt of the twins, had bought the farm many years ago, for reasons she generally declined to share. The twins, Taako and Lup, had come into her care a short while after, though nobody knew for sure why. And after enough time, it no longer matter much - the twins had been living and growing in the town for so long that, elvish lifespans being what they were, nobody could remember a time without them.

    When the twins were old enough to have grown to maturity and past it, it happened that their aunt put up an advertisement to hire some help around the farm. And soon enough anybody from the nearby town who happened to pass the farm could observe not only any number of the three elves but a human man hard at work as well.

    Barry Bluejeans was a largely unremarkable man, who came from a steady line of no-nonsense humans, the kind who might be described as ‘salt-of-the-earth’ and who tended to have grandparents that ranged from overtly to overly racist. But Barry’s line was the kind that put great stock in common sense and work that reaped good, tangible results, and he was a very likeable fellow overall.

    To humans, at least.

    “Hey, nerd!” The bucket clattered to the ground, as much as a bucket could clatter against straw. “Toss me some water, why don’t’cha, so I can refill this?”

    Lup was the (very slightly) older of the two twins, and she showed it in her bossy nature. Her tendency to pick on Barry, however, could be blamed on nothing but childishness. Perhaps ‘pick on’ is too strong a term; more aptly, she directed a large part of her attention towards him, which largely consisted of ordering him around and trying to get him to be angry about it in some - or any - way, shape, or form.

    She had never succeeded, which was why she kept trying.

Barry finished forking hay into the last cow’s feeder, and then picked up the bucket.

    “Whatever you say,” he said amicably.

    “Why don’t you ever talk to me nicer?” Lup asked, from where she was standing next to their lone horse’s empty water trough. She was often frustrated by Barry’s easygoing attitude. Taako was always far more receptive to her provocation of what they called ‘friendly debate’, which their aunt called ‘a headache’ and what anyone else would call an argument. “I’m technically the boss. Heir of the boss.”

    “You’ve never asked me to,” Barry pointed out.

    “Well, that shouldn’t matter. You work for my family.”

    Barry pondered that for a moment. “All right,” he said, “as you wish.”

    ‘As you wish’ - it became a sort of inside joke between them, over the years. Lup would say, ‘Polish my saddle, Barry,’ and he would agree; then she would clear her throat pointedly, and he would smile and correct himself with, ‘As you wish’. Taako got into the habit of mimicking throwing up whenever Barry said it, when the joke began to wear on him. But Lup and Barry never tired on it, for after awhile it stopped being a joke. What it started being was honest, for if Lup asked Barry to do something, he would surely do his utmost to do it, simply because she had asked.

Barry was barely thirty when he began working for Lup’s family, which made him an excellent age to keep up with both her and her brother, as they appeared to age at relatively the same pace. In fact, by the time Taako announced his desire to go out into the world and discover magic and adventure for himself, Lup’s heckling had smoothed out into a friendlier teasing.

    It was Barry, too, that reassured Lup despite her dread at being separated from Taako. Siblings who grow up so closely will always desire some kind of closeness, except in anger, but twins are another matter entirely. It is safe to say that Lup and Taako had never been more than about ten feet apart, give or take. But instead of demanding that Taako stay at the farm with her, Lup comforted herself in knowing that Barry and her aunt would still be there, and let her brother follow his dreams out into the wilds of Faerûn.

    Over the years that followed, without her brother, Lup often substituted Barry as the receiver of her various complaints and bits of gossip and snippets of thoughts. An already meaningful friendship became deeper, though neither was ever quite sure of where it was heading. And though it is rare that two people ever fall so easily together, much less encounter each other by such an accident as an advertisement for a farmhand, they found that they both were rapidly falling in love with the other.

* * *

    “Wait,” Angus said. Lucretia paused, looking up from the book with a questioning eyebrow. “They can’t fall in love _yet._ That’s bad writing. If they fall in love that quickly, what’s going to happen in the rest of the book?”

    “Shall I tell you upfront, or would you prefer that I finish reading it to you?” Lucretia asked pointedly.

    “I’m just saying,” Angus grumbled. “Keep reading, please.”

* * *

    And though it is rare that two people ever fall so easily together, much less encounter each other by such an accident as an advertisement for a farmhand, they found that they both were rapidly falling in love with the other.

    Nobody saw anything wrong with it, so both Lup and Barry saw fit to not only continue being in love, but throw themselves headfirst into the burgeoning romance - each in their own fashion. Barry was, of course, the steady roses-and-chocolates kind of person, while Lup often snatched him up for impulsive rides into the countryside for swims in the creek and a scrounged dinner of whatever they could find, or whatever had been in their pockets.

    They had very happy times together, for a while. But Lup’s restlessness meant that it did not last quite as long as it could have. She, like her brother, yearned for adventure and magic beyond what a farm’s means could offer. So it was with a heavy heart that Lup, with a kiss goodbye, set off to sail across the sea and find her brother.

    Barry, though he missed Lup dearly, was content to continue his work on the farm, though with both twins gone he and their aunt had to shoulder more work than usual. He made sure to take Lup’s (previously Taako’s) horse out regularly for exercise, and he looked after the cows as usual, though there were fewer now than there had been - troubles had forced their aunt to sell a few. Life seemed, in short, to proceed as usual, which was why it was such a terrible shock when news was delivered to their door that Lup’s ship had been attacked and sunk.

* * *

    “I don’t like this book,” Angus said.

    “Bear with me, please,” Lucretia said.

    “That’s called _fridging,_ aunt Lucretia. It’s a really terrible narrative convention. Why did you pick this one?” But Lucretia only waited patiently until Angus folded his arms and allowed her to continue reading.

* * *

    Barry clutched the frame of the door in shock. “Sunk?” He repeated numbly. “But - there had to have been someone nearby who noticed what was going on, right? Some kind of other ship.”

    “Well,” said the messenger, looking regretful, “there was. That was sort of the problem.”

    It was then that the messenger related the part where the attack had been perpetrated by none other than the Dread Pirate Roberts - the famous buccaneer who never took any prisoners nor left any alive, and who had always seemed much more interesting and far away in stories.

    Lup had always joked about becoming a pirate when she got older.

    In Barry and Anais’ grief, the farm began to fail a little more obviously. Lup’s aunt felt like going about the day-to-day business about as much as Barry did, but they _tried._

    Trying was difficult, and it came to the point where both were forced to admit that it was not working out. Anais sold the farm and returned to her family in a more elvish part of the country, and Barry was left adrift.

    The first thing that occurred to him, when he thought of what he might do, was to seek out Taako and tell him the news.

    It was a hard journey. For one, Taako had made his journey many years ago, and Barry knew his sister far better than he knew him. But with luck, after many months, Barry found him in a mysterious shop far to the north, where he had apprenticed (in a way) under a warlock.

    It took a moment for Taako to recognize Barry; not only had it been years since they last saw each other, Barry felt as though grief had aged him, and perhaps that was reflected in his appearance. But as soon as Taako realized who the visitor was, he grinned broadly and clapped Barry on the shoulder.

    “I didn’t expect to see you all the way out here!” He laughed. “Barry, my man, what’s up? What’s shakin’ back home?” When Barry only looked at him, a little helplessly - for what could he say to Taako, who seemed so happy here? - Taako faltered a little. “What is it?”

    “It’s - uh, it’s Lup,” Barry managed. Something like fear flashed across Taako’s face, though it was quickly replaced with bravado.

    “Yeah? What about her? She need her handsomer brother back by her side?”

    “Taako, she’s - she’s gone.”

    Taako’s smile faltered and vanished. His expression grew more and more drawn as Barry passed on, haltingly, the message that he and their aunt had been given. When Barry finished, Taako was shaking his head.

    “Look,” Taako said, “my _dude -_ have you _met_ Lup? She’d have wrecked this Dread Whatever dude, I mean, seriously! You really think she’s gonna d-” His breath hitched. “Barry. Dude. C’mon.”

    “Taako, I’m sorry, but they looked for survivors, and they said they didn’t find any.”

    Taako looked hunted, now. A shrill voice from inside the shop called for him, but he didn’t move.

    “But she can’t be-”

    “I’m _sorry,_ but she is.”

    “Fuck you,” Taako spat suddenly, and sprinted for the hills before Barry could do more than stare after him. Barry watched him recede into the distance for several minutes, and then slowly turned to go back the way he had come.

* * *

    “Aunt Lucretia,” Angus said, “you know I’m only ten.”

    “I’ve heard you swear before, Angus, I’m sure it’s nothing you haven’t already heard.”

* * *

    The journey home was far longer than the one Barry had taken to reach Taako in the first place, largely because Barry was not very interested in the prospect of returning home. He often wondered if, with the farm sold, he even _had_ a home anymore to return to. He could always go further back than that, and return to the house he’d grown up in, but Barry felt almost as if he had grown _past_ his childhood home; as if it were some far-off place that he could never again reach.

    So he wandered.

    It might have interested Barry - if ‘interested’ is the appropriate word - to know that a matter of weeks after he left, there was another visitor at the shop run by Taako’s teacher, the warlock Garfield. This visitor was also a familiar one. He was a Count from Neverwinter, who when pressed for a name on his first visit over a year ago had grudgingly given only ‘Sazed’. Taako, holed up in his room and working through the stages of grief, did not see Sazed arrive, but heard the old warlock greet him.

    “I’ve come for what I asked for,” Sazed said, without bothering with any greetings. Taako could hear him speak perfectly well; his rooms were above the store.

    “Ah, yes!” Said the warlock. “I remember it quite well.” Taako did, too. Sazed had asked for poison - a very, _very_ rare kind that had needed to be brewed relatively fresh, and had taken the better part of six months to make. Taako had scratched his legs raw gathering stinging nettles to help create it. The man himself was memorable, too - he had six fingers on his left hand instead of the usual five. Despite the distressing news he’d received, Taako's attention was piqued. “I have it right here. Now all we have to do is settle on a price!”

    Taako gently opened his door as the two below bargained back and forth. Silverpoint poison wasn’t cheap, especially the synthetic version they’d been commissioned for - this stage of the transaction would take a while. He intended to creep down the stairs and observe, maybe poke fun at his teacher a little. Not that the warlock was much of a teacher. All he did was make Taako work for him, in exchange for allowing Taako access to reams of ancient magical resources he had squirreled away, just in case the right buyer came up and asked for it.

    Below, or rather, in front now, the bargaining was reaching a fever pitch. Taako jerked the handle of the door that led to the main part of the shop, opening his mouth to tell both of the people inside (or the warlock, at least) to be a little quieter.

    He took one step into the room, and Sazed appeared to lose his patience.

    Sazed drew something from his belt that was not his sword. Taako had barely a glimpse of the knife before it was jammed into Garfield’s chest. A knife shouldn’t have done enough damage to a warlock of such a level, but evidently there was more to the knife that met the eye. Garfield choked, and fell off his stool, out of view behind the counter.

    Taako stood frozen in the doorway. He didn’t know how to react. He didn’t even _like_ Garfield. The warlock had been a last resort, and a shop job before it had been an apprenticeship. He kept trying to convince Taako to become a warlock instead of a wizard, though Taako didn’t trust whatever deity Garfield drew his power from as far as he could throw his mentor. But he’d been here for years - this was his home away from home, and Garfield was a part of that.

    Sazed sheathed the knife, and only then seemed to notice Taako. “Ah,” he said flatly. “You.”

    The casual dismissal felt like a spark that ignited everything inside Taako. He threw himself forward with a cry, drawing his wand, only to be backhanded into a wooden post. Furious, Taako got out, “Magic mi-” before Sazed seized the vial of potion from the counter and pressed it to Taako’s face.

    Taako froze.

    “You know what this is,” Sazed said. His hand was shaking, but so was Taako, and so neither noticed. “I’ve no doubt you helped make it. If I were to so much as twitch - my - thumb...” He made that exact motion. Taako flinched, because Sazed’s thumb was perilously close to the cork of the vial. Synthetic silverpoint was deadly enough that even inhaling a whiff off of it could make a person sick. Simply having the glass of the vial holding it in contact with his face was making him sweat.

    “Then again,” Sazed said in a low voice, “Who would miss you? Not the old warlock, not anymore.” Perhaps realizing that Taako was too frightened to try any magic, he smiled cruelly. “I think I’ve found a price that suits me.”

    He took a step back, then turned on his heel and walked out. Slowly, Taako sank to the ground, still plastered against the wooden post. It took him a long time to move from that spot.  

* * *

 

It was late at night when, bearing only a hastily-packed bag of his most precious belongings, his wand, and a few changes of clothes, Taako set out after Sazed. It was difficult to follow the Count, for he traveled in a coach, but coaches were rare and drawn by more than one horse, so the only real difficulty lay in making out the mass of hoofprints at night and reliably following it even over ground sturdy enough to resist having prints made in it.

    He rested, of course, in towns along the way, but only because he had to. Elves had no need for sleep, but if they did, he would have slept little. Taako thought of little else except finding Sazed. If somebody had asked him why, he would not have been able to answer. But Sazed was a murderer, and in the wake of his sister’s death followed so quickly by the warlock’s, Taako had latched onto this self-determined mission like it was the last thing he had in life.

But it was in the village of Glamour Springs that he well and truly lost the trail. There had been a drought, so that when Sazed passed through the ground was hard and dry. When the rains had finally broken, they had done so over Taako’s head, leaving even the barest traces of Sazed’s path drowned in mud and expansive, ankle-deep puddles.

    Cursing his luck, Taako retreated to the only inn in town, feeling and most likely looking half-drowned himself. While Barry Bluejeans was pondering his fate on the long, winding road home, Taako was bargaining his cooking skills for something as simple as a place to sleep. His time away from home had taught him nothing if not how to cut a good deal in his favor.

    Taako was, in fact, extraordinarily lucky that it was Glamour Springs and not any other nearby town that Sazed had led him to, though he would never fully realize this. The inhabitants of this particular village were well situated; natural hilly surroundings, as well as rivers and a waterfall or two, had arranged things so that politics and even armies tended to wash up against the farthest borders of the town and go around instead. There was not a more trustworthy lot of people in the whole of Faerûn. Very soon, there would be a good number fewer of them.

    The mistake Taako made - and the only one, mind - was in keeping his errand secret. He told no one of who he was chasing, not a single detail, much less a name. Neither did he tell them of what kind of mission brought him in such haste and such dire weather to Glamour Springs - and in the middle of the night, at that. These circumstances helped in that the townspeople were more likely to lend him a little sympathy upon his arrival, the same moment Taako most desperately needed such mercy. It was an unfortunate coincidence that the same conditions allowed his enemy to remain hidden.

    Taako remained in Glamour Springs far longer than he intended to. He cooked at the inn to earn his room and board, and found that he enjoyed it. It turned into quite the production some nights, and once or twice the room was packed to the brim full of people who wanted to watch his magical cooking. _Literally,_ magical. He was not an especially accomplished magician, though he had set out intending to become one when he first left the farm years ago, but he knew a great deal of parlour tricks and flourishes that could make a mage hand look like a spectacular production.

    When Taako thought about it, later, he understood that it was the crowd that allowed Sazed to go unnoticed. There was half a town’s worth of people crowding up close to the counter to watch his overblown production - he wouldn’t have noticed one more. He was too busy drinking in the admiration, which had seemed like a balm after everything that had happened. He wouldn’t have noticed a few drops of poison.

    After he ran from the town, like he ran from Garfield’s shop, Taako agonized over what Sazed could have poisoned. It could have been the sauce. It could have been one of the early ingredients. Taako could have _had his hands in it._ The first week, he split his time between straining to carry the weight of the murder of forty people that he had been unable to prevent (if not complicit in), and obsessively checking himself for any sign of the symptoms of silverpoint poisoning. He knew that brand of poison, _he helped make it,_ he knew the symptoms practically by heart. He remembered, dizzy with relief and guilt, how he’d gotten faintheaded towards the end of the demonstration. He must have been breathing it in, unknowingly. But he’d retreated to the back to wash up, gotten out of range, out of the area of effect.

    And when he’d come back, they’d all been dead, and Sazed had been there to gloat.

    Taako ran for a month before it occurred to him that he could have continued to follow Sazed. But so many people connected to him had died in so little time; maybe it would be better if he just stayed by himself forever.

    There wasn’t anything he wanted to do anymore, anyway.

* * *

 

    A year into Barry’s journey back home, he was only a quarter of the way, though it had taken him only a year to make his way to Taako the first time. Many things had happened while he traveled. Barry found himself wandering the far-flung regions around Neverwinter without making any attempt to leave for friendlier lands, and so had heard much of everything from local legends and folklore to agriculture and politics. The politics especially, in the current climate.

    Many years ago, possibly before Barry was born (but unlikely so), a man of little repute called Governor Kalen had overthrown the reigning Lord Sterling of Neverwinter and crowned himself king. Nobody had ever really liked him, but the countryside was abuzz with the news of his untimely death - and so soon after his wife’s, only a few years earlier! His son, Kalen the Younger, had crowned himself quickly and assumed his new position, but there was talk of unrest on the fringes. Whispers of how _convenient_ the old king’s death had been percolated even in the city itself, and the farther away one got from Neverwinter proper the bolder those claims grew.

    _Murderer,_ said the whispers. _Kinslayer. Bad as his father or worse, even if he did off him. Why should we have a king, anyway?_

That was already old news by the time a year had passed. Still, people found reasons to talk about it. The destruction of Raven’s Roost (which nobody had ever managed to fully blame on Kalen, older or younger) became a popular topic again, as well as the Battle of Goldcliff, the story of which grew more drawn out and convoluted every time Barry heard it. There was also something about half a small town being poisoned, but that had been months and months ago, and the town was so little and isolated that by then most people had lost interest.

    Barry, by and large, tried to stay out of politics. He wasn’t sure he had the heart to hear about everything that was happening. He stuck to doing odd jobs in whatever villages he passed through, for however long he happened to stay there, and that got him along pretty well for the most part. Winter had forced him into a prolonged stay in the last little village, and so when the beginnings of spring came along he was glad to be on his way. Spring was always easier to travel in; and as it so often did, spring gave way to a dry, hot summer.

    _Too_ dry and hot.

    Barry saw the fire before anything else. It was too hot for the heat coming off of it to make any change, and it was too far away for the smell of burning trees and undergrowth to spread as far as where he was; but it was large enough that it could be seen from miles away.

    Barry took off running.

    He didn’t even think before bolting towards the fire. There were people on the road, fleeing in the opposite direction and all he could think was, _There are more people trapped over there._

He was right. He wasn’t happy about it.

    Barry flung the contents of his waterskin over a flaming doorway and reached through it to drag a halfling girl out. She was curled up in a ball, but managed to come to her senses enough to stumble to her feet.

    “My sister,” she sobbed, and then something cracked and fell inside the building with a shower of sparks and a creaking groan of wood, and she screamed. Barry, caught between her and whoever else might be in there, stood frozen. The next second, he abruptly transitioned from ‘person’ to ‘vault beam’ as a lithe blue dragonborn used his shoulders as a springboard to launch herself towards the house.

    “Sorry!” She yelled. “We got it!”

    Barry kept his attention on the halfling after that, did his best to get her a safe distance away. He turned around, and faltered at the sight of the flames.

    Shit, he was a wizard! Magic and nature were practically the same thing! Barry dug deep for the wand he hadn’t used since Lup left, and turned the wildfire back on itself with a gust of wind strong enough that it knocked over the dragonborn from before and made the hoses groan with the strain - but not fall.

    Barry lingered in the aftermath as people trickled back into the town. Not many houses were burned, but half the fields were ash, and there were plenty with burn wounds. One or two, caught out in the fields in the initial blaze, had died.

    It took a week of trying to help with healing however he can, despite not knowing any healing magic, for Barry to realize that people _knew_ him. At first he was just the mysterious wizard who had turned back the fire, but at some point when he wasn’t paying attention, everybody in the town of Phandalin had learned his name. They all knew what he’d done. Sometimes people came up to thank him for it. If the fire hadn’t been turned back it had certainly been strong enough to set the whole town ablaze - as it was, it had only thoroughly destroyed a few distant farms and a small cluster of houses.

    “Here,” said a voice, “take a break.” Barry was used to this, too; an unfamiliar hand proffering food. He took the bowl of steaming soup, and blearily looked up from a minor wound into a familiar face.

    “It’s you!” He exclaimed, nearly spilling the soup. The blue dragonborn smiled - or at least he hoped that was what she was doing.

    “Yeah, I’m pretty recognizable,” she said. “Name’s Carey. Apologies for the using-you-as-gymnastics-equipment thing, but I was in a rush and you were in the way. It was a good thing you did,” and Barry was used to this, but she finished it differently than the others he’d heard it from. “Saving that halfling girl, Noelle. A lot of her family is pretty badly off.”

    “Oh - I, well, is she okay?” Barry asked.

    “Yeah, she’s right as rain, except for the occasional nightmare, but who isn’t?” Carey laughed awkwardly. “She’s, uh, staying with me and Killian at the moment.”

    “Oh,” Barry said, wondering vaguely who Killian was.

    “I came by to ask if you wanted to,” Carey said. “Stay with us, that was. We’re pretty much the only ones with any room to spare at the moment.”

    Barry blinked at her for a few moments, processing the offer. “But-” _Why_ was obvious. Barry paused, groping for words, and remembered his situation. He had nowhere else to stay. “...Thanks.”

    Carey grinned, much wider this time. “Not a problem.”

    Carey and Killian’s home was pleasant. It at least had the space for four people, which Barry was especially grateful for once he learned that Killian was the tall, burly orc lady who had been fighting the fires at Carey’s side. Barry realized, as his stay stretched on, that the cozy air was not the house itself nor the space it afforded, but rather the attitude of its inhabitants seeping into the grain of the wood from long years of occupancy. The two women, though they differed in many respects, were equally loving, and extended the maximum of courtesy to any guest as though the guest were a lifelong friend.

They were also, Barry thought, perhaps equally deadly in their respective fields, though in his time with them Barry only ever saw hints of their prowess and never gleaned so much as a hint as to their classes. But one did not learn how to springboard off a man’s back or gain muscles like Killian’s without _really_ knowing what one was doing.

    A rainstorm pounded down a few weeks after the fire, breaking the dry spell. The villagers poured out of their houses to dance in the rain, to laugh and sing and hope this would be enough to grow what food they could before autumn. Barry was not among them. Carey and Killian were lovely hosts, and lovely people, but this was not his town. Saving one person from a fire and casting a single spell were not feats worthy of belonging.

    He still missed Lup with an ache that sat heavily in his chest. He did not think it would ever leave.

    Two days after the rainstorm, an extraordinarily fancy carriage drawn by a team of glossy horses got stuck in the mud on the outskirts of Phandalin. Barry, having been walking with no clear purpose, went to investigate and offer help. Carey, who had offered to accompany him (he’d been too polite to say no) thrashed her tail at the sight of the coat of arms embossed on the doors.

    “Excuse me,” Barry, who had never grown up in Neverwinter and had no reason to know the crest of its royal family, called out. “Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”

    “Trouble is the least of it!” Spat an irritated voice from within. The driver, busy trying to coax the horses to pull harder and lift the carriage out of the muddy rut, looked fearful as the carriage door opened.

    A man stepped out. Barry found himself at a loss for words. Not because the man was particularly beautiful - Barry’s tastes did not run quite so old as this man appeared to be - but because the stranger was dressed and groomed as severely as a human being could hope to look. His clothing was rich in color and equally richly embroidered and decorated. The fabric of his jacket was as smooth as the velvet seats which Barry caught a glimpse of inside the carriage.

    The man gave Barry a brusque once-over, and his demeanor changed slightly in a way that could only be described as less condescending.

    “Ah,” said the man. “Leave the horses be, driver. I seem to have found the man himself by chance.”

    Years down the road, Barry would wrestle with himself, wondering whether or not to regret wearing blue jeans on that particular day.

    The man’s name was His Royal Majesty King Kalen, and he had come with a proposition for Barry Bluejeans.

    “Marry you?” Barry repeated in shock. Kalen had summoned him imperiously to walk alone with him, but now he stopped out of sheer surprise. “What for?”

    Kalen stopped as well, but he looked briefly irritated about it. “Tales of your heroism and magical skill in fighting the fire have spread,” he said. “Surely you knew about it. The country is thirsty for tales of heroism, and yours serves nicely.”

    “Oh,” Barry said faintly. He wasn’t sure what else to say. There had to be better ways to respond to that. “And _you_ heard them?”

    “I make it my business to know what goes on in my kingdom,” Kalen replies. “My father bestowed upon himself that responsibility, and as such I must hold myself to the same standard.”

    “I get it.” Barry stared at Kalen - the King - for a few moments, still bewildered. “Look, uh, your - your highness. Majesty?” He corrected nervously when Kalen gave him a stern look. “I’m flattered and everything, but I can’t say yes to this. I’m already in love.”

    “I see,” Kalen said quietly.

    Still nervous, Barry keeps talking. “I, uh, I fell in love a long time ago. For good. It was a real kind of love, the true kind. And, well, she’s not here anymore, but I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone like I loved her, if I ever find anyone I love romantically again. And I won’t lie to you, so I can’t say yes.”

    For a moment Barry was sure that he was about to be banished from the kingdom, or maybe executed, so severe was Kalen’s measuring stare.

    “What nonsense,” Kalen said eventually. “If I was looking to marry for love, I would find someone simpler.” While Barry once again stared at him in surprise, he gestured for Barry to follow him. As they walked, he explained his thoughts.

    Kalen, thought Barry, was a very clinical man. Regardless of whether or not he’d actually murdered his father, he knew exactly what he wanted from life and expected life to fall into line with his plan. He had determined that, the state of his rule being what it was, the only thing that could salvage the people’s opinion of him was a royal wedding; and who better to further that goal than a hero of the common man?

    “I expect nothing of you,” Kalen said, “except your participation in the marriage and your fulfillment of the occasional royal duty by my side. It will be a far more comfortable lifestyle than you are currently used to, I can promise that much.” When Barry did not respond, he drew himself up and looked down at Barry. “Think about it. I will return in three days for an answer.”

    When Barry returned with Carey to their house, he was anxiously pressed for details about the conversation. Carey had not failed to notice the crest; she had _certainly_ recognized Kalen himself. When Barry related what he had been told, all three unanimously (a rare occasion) advised him to refuse. Carey pointed out Kalen’s air of steely unforgiving untrustworthiness; Killian refused to state her reasons but insisted that Kalen could not be trusted; Noelle simply pleaded with Barry not to leave.

    Barry thought long and hard about his choices. It was a harder choice to make than it might seem. Kalen did not appeal to him, but he could think of nothing else to do with his life. And while Carey and Killian attempted to hide it, he knew that his and Noelle’s presence stretched thin their means. Noelle’s livelihood had been destroyed in the fire, and Barry’s only job seemed to be ‘town hero’; Carey and Killian could not do the work to support four people on their own forever.

    Still, he longed to stay in Phandalin, with its simplicity and friendliness. And so Barry thought about Kalen’s offer for all three days, nearly day and night. He shared his thoughts with no one, but often went into small wild places and stared into the distance. Killian noted that he favored a small field, spared from the fire, bordered by a burbling little creek and bushes full of slowly ripening summer berries.

    Barry thought of Lup, and the farm, neither of which he could ever get back. He thought of Carey and Killian, who had already done far more than he had ever asked of him. He thought of what kind of life he might have in a castle, as stern Kalen’s husband.

    When Kalen returned for an answer in three days, Barry left with him.


	2. In Which Barry Is Kidnapped and then Rescued

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cannot believe i banged out this entire thing and more in one day
> 
> as promised, drama and adventure! some old and some new characters appear! what fun!

The seasons rolled into the height of summer. News of the royal wedding had spread quickly through the land, and in Neverwinter proper where Barry now resided the fervor for it seemed almost tangible. Barry had been installed with all due reverence and an uncomfortable amount of bowing and scraping in Kalen’s castle, though he would not officially be a prince until he was actually married, a few weeks after summer’s zenith. He often took advantage of his newfound station in life to borrow one of the horses from the stables and go for long, fast rides in the sweeping fields and forests that surrounded the capital. It helped to escape for a moment, to be able to lose himself a little and forget what was coming.

    Maybe he had begun to make _too_ much of a habit of it, because one day in the forest he was hailed by three figures. The most prominent of the three was a dark elf in a black tabard, who stood in the middle of the path and smiled as Barry hurriedly reined in the horse.

    “You shouldn’t stand in the path like that,” Barry said. “I could’ve run into you!” He didn’t ask if they were lost; he felt strangely wary. It could be that they were just lost travelers, but they could just as easily be overeager patriots from Neverwinter, or old fans from Phandalin. Thoughts of Phandalin made Barry nostalgic; he’d had little contact with any of the three women he’d lived with, however brief his stay had been. The Neverwinter postal system was impossible to use to the point where Barry considered it a minor miracle anyone ever got any kind of letter at all, much less on time.

    “Ah, forgive me,” the dark elf replied easily. He had a strange accent. His taller, burly companion shifted back and forth, while the other elf in a wizard’s hat tugged the broad brim down over his face. “I only wanted to make sure I had your attention. Tell me, are we far from any cities? Or towns, perhaps?”

    “No,” Barry said. “You’re far away from...pretty much anywhere important, actually.”

    “Then there will be no one close enough to hear you scream,” said the elf, with a smile suddenly much sharper than it had been a moment ago, and the human man reached out and struck Barry’s head hard enough that Barry slid bonelessly out of the saddle and was unconscious before he hit the ground.

* * *

    Magnus examined the unconscious man on the ground, and looked up at Magic Brian. “I think I might’ve hit him too hard.”

    “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Magic Brian said cheerfully. He had tied the horse’s reins to a low branch and was using a pocketknife to carve something into the saddle. “Just get him into the ship, please. And tie him up.”

    Magnus hesitated before reaching for the rope. “What are you doing?”

    “I’m making it look like the rebellion kidnapped this man.”

    “The rebellion?” Magnus’s jaw dropped. “You didn’t say we’d be doing that! What are you framing them for?”

    “It’s what I’ve been paid to do, darling,” Magic Brian brushed a few tiny shavings away from his finished work. “And if I don’t get paid, neither do you, so hurry up with the rope, yes? We are all here for money.”

    “We’re only gonna be on a boat,” Magnus said sulkily. “Why’s he need to be tied up?”

    “Well, get him on the boat then.”

    Magnus still waited for a moment, casting a glance at the horse. Magic Brian untied it and with a slap sent it galloping off back the way it had come, towards Neverwinter. Magnus watched it go, wondering if the plan would work.

    He kind of hoped it wouldn’t.

* * *

    Barry groaned as he dragged himself back to consciousness. He was lying on some kind of flat surface, but it seemed to rock strangely underneath him. He tried to get his head to stop spinning, pressing one palm against his face. Where was he? Those men...

    Barry opened his eyes with a start when he remembered the three who had stopped him. Coincidentally, the human man was leaning over him at that moment, and he smiled when he saw Barry looking back.

    “You’re awake!” He said, leaning away and sitting back on his heels. “That’s good. I was getting worried I’d done it too hard and you’d never wake up at all.”

    “What,” Barry said, taken aback. “How - where am I?” Sitting up and looking around was all it took to answer his own question. He was staring up at a mast with a white sail rounded by the wind, and there were ropes and rigging everywhere, and the noise of waves coming from every direction. “What do you want with me?”

    The man pulled a face, looking almost apologetic. “It’s a long story, dude. I’m only in it ‘cause I really needed the money, I barely knew anything about what we were doing until I was already in it.”

    Barry looked around again, this time noticing the other two. The elf in black stood at the prow of the ship, and the unusually familiar one was leaning against the railing near the black. He looked back at the taller elf, guessing that he was the boss-

    Wait. Unusually familiar?

    Barry looked back at the wizard and nearly choked. _“Taako?”_

The man and the dark elf looked at him and Taako with interest. Taako pulled sharply on the brim of his hat, dragging it over his face, but quickly gave up and settled for ignoring Barry in favor of staring out over the river they were sailing along.

    “What are you doing here?” Barry asked, standing up. Taako looked different than he remembered, though of course it had been over a year since they’d last seen each other. Taako was freckly and browner, as though he had been spending a great deal of time outside. The hat was new, too, and so was his wand. The way he scowled and refused to look at Barry was _definitely_ new. “Did these guys get you too?”

    The burly man snorted, and immediately looked apologetic.

    “Shut up, Barry,” Taako said.

    “You did not tell us this man was a friend of yours!” The tall elf sounded delighted. “Bad form, Taako.”

    “You shut up, too!”

    “I don’t understand,” Barry said, looking between Taako and the elf and the man.

    “I’m afraid Taako here is one of our little crew,” the dark elf said, not sounding the least bit sorry. “It’s very handy to have a wizard on board no matter what you are doing, you know?”

    Slowly, Barry looked back at Taako.

    “You agreed to _kidnap_ me?” He asked.

    “I didn’t know it was you!” Taako retorted. “And you can stuff the righteous indignation, Barold. Not everyone gets to wander into town and instantly be some kinda folk hero.”

    “That’s not what happened!” Barry protested. He felt as if he were standing on unsteady ground, and not just because he was on a ship. What had _happened_ to Taako? “And why would you agree to kidnap somebody, anyway?”

    “Can you knock him out again, Magnus?” Taako asked the man, who gave Barry a thoughtful look and then shook his head.

    “Don’t ignore me!” Barry demanded. “What would Lup have said?”

    “Lup would think I was _fucking awesome!”_ Taako shouted. “Don’t you _dare_ try to use her against me! You don’t know-”

    “Taako!” Magnus sounded alarmed. “Chill! I think maybe ignoring him was working better for you.”

    Scowling again, Taako pointedly turned his back on Barry. Barry continued to stare at his back, frustrated and frightened for Taako’s sake. But Taako said nothing, not even to one of his crewmates, as they continued to make their way down the wide river.

    “Why are you doing this?” Barry asked Magnus eventually, when he realized he should probably be more frightened for himself. Magnus shrugged.

    “Somebody hired us to kidnap you,” he said. “Or they hired Magic Brian, anyway.” Barry mouthed the name _Magic Brian_ incredulously to himself as Magnus continued. “He found me and Taako looking for work and got us in on the job, so we’re here.”

    “You don’t seem like a kidnapper.”

    “I’m _not,_ usually.” Magnus seemed faintly embarrassed. “Just - hard times, y’know?”

    “How hard could they be?” It was insensitive, but Barry was not in the best of moods.

    Magnus’s face closed off. “I’m from Raven’s Roost.” He smiled bitterly, and added, “or I was.”

    Barry did not ask him any other questions.

* * *

    Near sunset, Taako finally spoke. “Hey. _Hey,_ Brian.” Magic Brian, from his position at the prow looked up.

    “Yes? What is it?”

    “We’re being followed.”

    Magic Brian fairly leaped across the ship to try and see whatever Taako was looking at. Magnus simply stood behind them and moved the point of Taako’s hat out of the way.

    “I don’t see anything,” Magic Brian sniffed.

    _“There.”_ Taako pointed aggressively. “Look harder. There’s a ship with a red sail.”

    “Red is a weird choice,” Magnus said.

    “Maybe they’re making a statement or whatever. Point is, they’re following us.”

    “You don’t know that.” Magic Brian relaxed. “It’s just a simple fisherman going home.”

    “Sure,” Taako said skeptically. “Listen, this river isn’t all that highly trafficked-”

    _Splash._

All three of them whirled around to find an empty deck. Magnus jumped down to the main deck and leaned over the edge to find Barry striking out for the shore.

    “Wait!” Magnus yelled. “You can’t _swim_ to shore!”

    “I learned!” Barry yelled back, and then choked on a mouthful of water. It was freezing cold, which normally he liked, but now wasn’t the time. His clothes had quickly soaked through, and the light was fading from the sky. Soon he wouldn’t be able to see the shore at all. He started to kick again when a thin, high screech made him freeze.

    “Ah, you see?” Magic Brian called from the ship. “Your skill in swimming alone will not get you to the shore, my friend. These waters are the home of the shrieking eels!”

    Another screech resounded, overlapped by a third. Barry became aware of movement in the water, and strange currents lapping up against his body. A few feet away, something flashed briefly above the surface.

    “Just swim back!” Magnus yelled. Barry steeled himself, and began to swim farther away.

    The eel surfacing to hiss in his face with a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth threw a wrench in that particular plan.

* * *

    “He’ll be fine,” Lucretia said.

    Angus blinked. “What? Why did you stop?”

    “You looked nervous,” Lucretia explained. “I wanted to make sure you knew. Barry doesn’t die.”

    “I knew that,” Angus protested, though not very convincingly. “Keep reading, please? I want to know if he gets saved.”

    “Do you think Kalen will save him?”

    Angus bit his lip. “I don’t like Kalen very much, but maybe.”

    “Don’t worry,” Lucretia said. “You’re not supposed to like him.”

* * *

    Barry recoiled, splashing wildly and kicking out blindly at the thing. Water splashed into his mouth. The eel had lunged forward at the same moment, and missed. It fell into the water, and Barry felt it brush his leg as it swam away. The air was full of shrieking, now, and it was pitch-black as the last bit of the sun vanished over the horizon.

    His head knocked against something solid, and a hand reached down and grabbed him. Coughing, Barry was dragged back onto the deck. He let himself be dropped and lay flat, trying to breathe properly.

    “Well,” sighed Magic Brian, “that was unpleasant. Magnus, tie him up.”

    “Come on,” Magnus said. “He’s not going to try again.” Barry raised his head in time to catch the narrow look that Magic Brian was giving Magnus. He also caught sight of Taako, messing the rigging, and understood what had happened; Taako had steered the ship closer to Barry so that Magnus could reach over and pick him up.

    Magnus picked him up again, hauling him up to deposit him in a corner by a pile of rope, which he used to bind Barry’s wrists. Barry’s clothes squelched uncomfortably as he shifted, trying to find a good place to sit.

    “Just sit tight,” Magnus said. “We’ll be sailing all night. You might have crap taste in men, but Kalen’ll probably pay the ransom if it’s you. We get money, you go home, win-win. It probably won’t take more than a couple days.”

    “Right,” Barry said, without believing a word Magnus said. He believed they were in it for the ransom, but Magnus made it sound very simple and not at all like it was a kidnapping. Magnus gave him a reassuring smile, finished tying his ankles together, and then left him alone.

    Barry managed to doze, and when he woke the sun was poking its fingers over the horizon. It was hot enough that during the night his clothes had dried a little, though they were still unpleasantly damp and especially wet where he had been sitting on them. He rolled over to try and dry further.

    “Uh, Brian,” Taako said, “I _told_ you we were being followed.”

    “That’s impossible,” Magic Brian snapped. He stomped up past Barry to join Taako at the stern again.

    “How many ships have red sails? It’s the same one, and it’s still behind us. We’re not on the river anymore, nobody else would have followed this far.”

    Barry’s heart sank. The river led out to the ocean, and who knew where they would take him from there. He wished he’d been able to get away the night before.

    “It doesn’t matter,” Magic Brian said. “We’ll be at the cliffs soon enough.”

    Barry managed to push himself into a sitting position, and saw black cliffs rearing up into the sky, just ahead of them. As the ship drew steadily closer and the sun rose higher in the sky, the cliffs appeared to slowly grow taller and taller. Barry was always sure that _now_ they were at the very bottom and could not possibly get any closer, but he was always proved wrong.

    “Excellent,” pronounced Magic Brian when the ship _finally_ bumped against the cliff. Magnus tossed the anchor down with a splash. “No sneaking foe will ever be able to follow us up the Cliffs of Insanity! Magnus, do you have the belt?”

    “Yep!” As Magnus produced a strange-looking belt with many loops and buckles, Barry noticed that there was a thick rope hanging down the cliff. It swayed in the breeze, and seemed to go all the way up.

    “Are you _absolutely_ sure you can do it?” Magic Brian asked sternly. “Be honest! If you fail a strength check, we’re all fucked, to put it plainly.”

“I’m super sure,” Magnus said firmly. He was now wearing the belt, and Barry suddenly grasped its purpose; there were two loops on either side to support Magic Brian and Taako while Magnus climbed the rope up to the top, leaving a difficult path for any pursuers. “Good. Taako?”

    “Yeah, yeah,” Taako muttered. He raised his wand and muttered under his breath, flicking it at first Magic Brian, then at Magnus, then at himself, though Barry saw no visible change in any of them. He glanced at Barry, then looked questioningly at Magic Brian.

    “It’s fine,” Magic Brian said dismissively, flapping one hand. Taako nodded and put his hands behind his back. But when Magic Brian turned to speak to Magnus again, Barry saw Taako’s wand hand twitch, and felt the hair on his arms prickle with a sudden buzz.

    He hoped it was a good spell.

    Barry was unceremoniously dragged up and his bound arms looped over Magnus’s neck; apparently he didn’t merit his own belt loop. Barry was tempted to just hang, but Magnus was the one carrying them, and suffocating him while they were halfway up seemed like a bad idea. So he gripped tight the strap of Magnus’s armor (which crossed the latter’s chest) and kept his eyes squeezed shut.

    “There’s that ship,” Taako said, after about twenty minutes of climbing. Barry risked opening his eyes to try and look, but he couldn’t turn his head far enough.

    “They’ll never be able to follow us up,” Magic Brian said confidently.

    “Huh,” Taako said. “They’re dressed all in crimson, too. Not exactly trying to be subtle, then.”

    “Does it matter?” Magnus sounded strained, but he _was_ carrying three people up a cliff with only a rope to climb.

    “It does when they’re starting to climb the rope.”

    “What?” Magic Brian twisted around. He stared down for a moment, then jerked and turned his face towards the sky. “Taako, blast them back.”

    “Nah.”

    “Excuse me?”

    “I don’t feel like it,” Taako said stubbornly. “They’re like thirty feet behind us, anyway.”

    “Please don’t do any magic,” Magnus said. “I need to concentrate, and any magic is going to be really distracting.”

    It took only forty more minutes to reach the top. Magnus nearly flipped Barry off over his shoulders when he collapsed onto solid ground, but Barry was too relieved to no longer be dangling over an abyss to care.

    Magic Brian, as soon as he was free of the belt, hurried over to where the rope was tied _very_ securely to a large rock. He drew his wand and blasted the rope into two pieces with an overdone magic missile. The half that they had climbed slithered over the edge and vanished, still faintly smoking from one end.

    Taako stepped up to the edge and looked over.

    “They’re still there,” he said. “They grabbed the cliff.”

    Magic Brian swore in a language that Barry didn’t understand, but got the gist of anyway. He grabbed Barry by the arm and hauled him up so he could throw him at Magnus. “You - carry him! Taako, wait here and when they get to the top, _finish them.”_

“Whatever,” Taako said, and retreated a few feet away from the edge. Barry found himself thrown over Magnus’s broad shoulder, so that all he could see was a sweaty tunic. Still bound hand and foot, he could do nothing but let himself be carried away from his potential rescuer.

* * *

    Taako waited for five seconds before getting bored.

    He went back over to the edge, and called down to the figure in crimson, “You want me to throw down a rope?”

    There was a moment or two of silence before a woman’s voice drifted up to him. “What for?”

    “I’m going to die of boredom before you climb all the way up,” Taako said. “Just let me throw you a rope so we can get this over with.”

    “That’s a generous offer,” the woman said, “but I'm pretty sure you’re waiting up there to kill me, so I’m gonna have to pass.”

    “That does throw a wrench in it,” Taako agreed. “Uh - listen, I swear on my life that I’m not trying to trick you in any way.”

    “I can tell you’re an elf,” the woman said. “You’ve got plenty of life to waste on promises.”

    Taako thought, for a minute. “I could swear on my magic,” he offered.

    “Magic is too fickle for promises involving death.”

    Taako thought again, hard as well as long. “I swear on the grave of my sister,” he said, “which I wish I could have given her.”

    The woman was silent for several moments. Then she said, “Throw me the rope.”

    Taako unwound some of the rope from the rock it had been tied around (it had been looped around it many times, to make sure it was secure). He gauged the length, unwound one more bit, and then tossed it down. After a few moments, the woman in crimson came over the edge, getting quickly to her feet and away from the edge.

    As Taako looked at her, he realized that she was wearing a spell of disguise. He couldn’t make out her features properly, not that much of them was exposed; she wore a half-mask over her face of the same bright red of her long jacket. He could make out that her ears were pointed, and her hair was long, but everything else was stubbornly vague in a way that made his eyes hurt when he looked for too long. Strangely, there was a long knife in a sheath on one side of her belt and a red umbrella hanging from the other. What he did not notice was that she was staring back at him.

    “Thanks,” she said after a moment. “Are we gonna fight?”

    “You can take a minute to rest,” Taako said, finding himself strangely reluctant to fight her. He didn’t like obeying Magic Brian’s orders. Plus it was a _really_ nice day out, the kind that was way too nice to spoil with killing anybody. “I don’t mind.”

    The woman nodded, and sat down on a rock with a sigh.

    “What’s with the umbrella?” Taako asked, sitting down as well. The clifftop was covered with boulders and bits of squared-off stone; the ruins of some old keep or watchtower sat there, long broken down and overgrown, but some small pillars and walls with no mates still remained.

    “It’s a wand.” As an example, the woman drew it out and created a shower of sparks from it. “I made it myself fairly recently, and it works like a charm. Plus, nobody ever expects it to be a wand.”

    “It’s terrible,” Taako said. “Who just walks around with an umbrella for no reason other than it’s a fun party trick wand? Do you live under a rock full of no fashion sense or something?”

    The woman shrugged. “There’s no accounting for taste,” she said mildly. “Are you very accomplished in magic?”

    “I studied for awhile under a warlock,” Taako admitted. “I’m a wizard, though, so I mostly read whatever spellbooks he had lying around that would actually work for me.”

    “And now you’re a kidnapper instead of a professor?”

    “My teacher can hardly give me any letters of reference, since he’s dead.” Taako copied her and shrugged. “What can you do, y’know?”

    The woman stood up. “I want to see what you can do.”

    “In a fight?” Taako stood up as well, and drew his own wand. “I think that’s a little unfair. I mean, I have no idea how good you are, you could be grossly outmatched-”

    She shot him with magic missile in the chest. Two of the darts missed, but the one that hit made him stagger backwards.

    “O _kay,”_ Taako said, and flung a ray of frost at her. She nimbly leaped out of the way, and the battle was on.

    “You cast well,” the woman in crimson noted as Taako jumped to avoid a fireball. “Is that Aletria’s stance?”

    “You’re familiar with the works of Aletria?” Taako used an overpowered mage hand to try and trip her, but she was too heavy.

    “I studied them when I was a kid. I like the Milnora offense a lot better, though.” Taako stumbled and didn’t quite dodge the following blast of flame. It singed his ankles and blackened his shoes.

His heart was hammering, and Taako cursed himself for his foolishness. Lup had liked Aletria, too, which was the only reason he knew the stances so well. But it shouldn’t take one offhand comment to throw him off-balance.

“But the Milnora offense can easily be countered with Dagon’s stratagem,” he retorted, casting the illusion of a shield between them. Very quickly he also prestidigitated a small fire, which the woman had to leap to the side to avoid.

    “True,” she said, “but Dagon’s stratagem has a weakness.” She charged forward quickly, passing through the illusory shield. Taako took a flying leap off the high ground he’d been backed onto and rolled as he landed, coming up with his wand pointing square at the woman in crimson.

    “I was hoping you wouldn’t know that one,” he confessed. “You must be even better than me.”

    “I’m honored to be elevated past your own ego.” The woman leapt down as well, conjuring another fireball which scorched the ground where Taako had previously been standing. Taako attempted to charm her, but she shook off the spell easily, and he was forced to avoid yet another fireball.

    “Is there a reason for all the fire?” He asked, shooting a ray of frost at her, which missed - he’d moved too fast and not aimed properly.

    “I have a preference,” she replied. “You gotta admit, it works.”

    “I think I’d like it if you chose a _different_ preference.”

The woman grinned. “Oh, sure! Anything for my most knowledgeable foe.” She swept the umbrella in a wide and creating a powerful gust of wind. Taako barely managed to hold his ground. As soon as it had passed, he brought up his wand with a lightning spell on his lips - and faltered, for reasons unknown even to himself.

    When he hesitated, the woman in crimson took the opportunity to throw off a Thunderwave. Taako staggered, though the spell seemed unusually weak. It did, however, leave him just surprised enough that she had the time to cast Sleep.

    Taako crumpled gracelessly to the ground. It shouldn't have worked on him, as he was an elf, but this version of it did - the woman in crimson's secret weapon.

    The woman’s umbrella moved, as if tugging itself towards him, but she very firmly bound it shut with a bit of cord attached to the fabric and tucked it into her belt. Carefully, she turned Taako over so he was lying on his back a little more comfortably and placed his wand back into one of his pockets.

    For a few moments the woman in crimson simply stood there and looked at Taako’s unconscious form. “You fought well,” she told him. “I’m glad I had this opportunity.” Then she strode off, following the trail of Magic Brian and Magnus.

* * *

    Magic Brian was not one to get angry easily, and so he only frowned when he and Magnus noticed the dot of red in the distance about the size a person would be. “Hm. This is troubling.” After a moment of thought, he made Magnus put Barry down and cut the rope around Barry’s ankles. “You stay here,” he told Magnus. “You’re certainly bigger than whoever this is - get rid of them!” Then he grabbed Barry by the arm and hustled them both ahead.

    Magnus watched the approaching red figure for a few moments. She was making good speed; he probably only had a few minutes. She must have defeated Taako to come this far, which was no mean feat. He’d have to think of something to do.

* * *

    When the woman in crimson approached the scattering of chalky boulders, Magnus, from his hiding spot, threw a rock at her. It wasn’t very big, and he only threw it next to her, but it still made her freeze and draw...an umbrella? That was odd.

    “I missed on purpose,” Magnus said, stepping out from behind the tallest rock he had been able to find.

    “Thanks for that,” she said. Her face was curiously...vague. She was probably enchanted or cursed or something. The most Magnus could make out was a bright red mask covering the top half of her face. “I don’t suppose you saw a handsome guy in blue jeans go this way?”

    “He’s with my boss,” Magnus admitted. “I’m not supposed to let you pass.”

    The woman eyed him. “Because you could beat me in a match of pure strength?”

    “Yeah,” he said. “But you got past Taako, so you could probably beat me with your magic, since all I have are magical items.”

    “Very true,” the woman agreed. “I’ll be honest, I’d love it if I could just knock you out and be on my way. I’m kinda in a hurry.”

    “That’s fair, but I’d rather not be knocked out.” Magnus thought for a moment. “Are you any good with a sword?” In answer, the woman drew out a long knife. “Swords it is, then. I don’t normally use them.”

    “Neither do I,” the woman said, and put her umbrella back into her belt. Magnus unsheathed his sword with a rasp of steel, and had to parry her attack before it was even all the way out of the sheath.

    The woman in crimson was a dirty fighter. Magnus’s only advantages were his size, and the fact that his sword was a good deal longer than her knife. Keeping her far away enough that he could both reach her and keep her from getting too close was a difficult line to straddle, and he slipped up more than once.

    “This is taking a lot longer than I thought it would,” remarked the woman after a close escape from a badly wounded thigh.

    “You’re better at sword fighting then I thought you would be,” Magnus said.

    “Thanks.” The woman made a wickedly quick strike at his hand, gashing open the base of his thumb. Magnus cried out and dropped his sword.

    “Sorry, man,” the woman said, unsheathing her umbrella again, “but you get I’m on a rescue mission here.”

    “No offense taken,” Magnus said faintly, clutching his hand. The woman waved the umbrella at him, and he fell slowly to the side, dead asleep.

* * *

    Magic Brian smiled when the woman in crimson crested the hill he and Barry were on. “Hail and well met, my friend,” he called out. Barry stayed perfectly still, because Magic Brian had a knife to his throat.

    Warily, the woman approached, taking in the scene. Magic Brian sat before a relatively flat rock, on which he’d placed a handkerchief as a tablecloth and two tin cups, as well as some round slices of bread and a bottle which he’d produced from his bag. Barry had no idea what he intended to do with any of it.

Magic Brian still had a tight grip on Barry’s arm, and of course there was also the knife he was threatening Barry with, and the fact that Barry had been gagged.

    “Ah, no closer, thank you,” Magic Brian said when the woman got within a few feet. “I’d rather you stayed over there.”

    “I’d like to come closer,” the woman said.

    “Then if you do, I will press the knife in a little harder,” Magic Brian said calmly.

    “I can use magic from this far away,” the woman pointed out.

    “So can I.”

    The woman eyed the little table setup warily, and then Magic Brian himself. “I had thought the Black Spider would be a little more fearsome when I first laid eyes on him,” she said. “What a disappointment.”

    Magic Brian’s eyes lit up. “You have heard of me!” The woman nodded. “I must know your name.”

    “I’m not sharing.”

    “I must know.”

    “Get used to disappointment.”

    “But the Black Spider is not _my_ name,” Magic Brian said, “only a title. Surely you have one of your own that you can share.”

    The woman appeared to consider his proposition. “If you must know,” she said, “I am the Dread Pirate Roberts.”

    A cold feeling washed through Barry. Magic Brian laughed aloud in delight.

    “What a surprise, to see you on land!” Magic Brian said, while quiet fury followed the cold inside Barry. “I had not heard you were a woman - but it doesn’t matter! I confess I am thrilled to meet you for myself.”

    “And,” said the Dread Pirate Roberts, as if he had not spoken, “I challenge you to a duel.”

    “Ah,” Magic Brian said, far more quietly. He was smiling so wide Barry could see almost all of his teeth. “Of what sort?”

    “Of wits,” said Roberts. “It requires a certain amount of cunning to keep operations like ours running, as I’m sure you know. Pour the wine.”

    Magic Brian sheathed the knife and hurried to do as she asked. Barry couldn’t help but watch as Roberts approached and sat down. She took a small black stick out of a pouch at her belt and tore off one end of the paper covering it, revealing a white substance.

    “Smell it,” she said, passing it to Magic Brian, who dutifully did so.

    “I smell nothing,” he said, giving it back.

    “That’s because it’s iocane powder,” Roberts said. Magic Brian ‘oohhed’ appreciatively. “Scentless, and leaves no trace of its presence. I’ve heard it was used to murder the last king of Neverwinter.” Roberts picked up both of the tin cups, and turned, hiding them behind the bulk of her body. After a moment, she turned back around and placed the cups back down. Rather more pointedly, she crumpled up the empty paper and tossed it to the side.

    “There,” she said. “I poisoned one of the cups. You pick one, and I’ll take the other, and we’ll both drink.”

    “Hm,” Magic Brian said. He was still smiling. “Very simple. I expected something more elaborate.”

    “Then you know the answer?”

    “Well, of course, there are many options.” Magic Brian began to gesture animatedly as he spoke. “It’s possible that you put it in your own cup, expecting me to distrust the one you gave me. However, it’s also possible that you knew I might think that, and put it in mine expecting me to subvert what some might call the wisest choice. However-”

    “Enough talking,” Roberts interrupted. “Pick one, will you?”

    “But I haven’t explained how - oh!” Magic Brian accidentally knocked over the cup closest to him, leaving a stain on the handkerchief. He hurriedly righted it. “My bad.”

    Roberts nodded tightly. The stain, Barry noticed, strangely enough had dried almost immediately. It was hot and sunny out, but not _that_ hot and sunny.

    Magic Brian hemmed and hawed for a few moments, before picking up the cup that sat in front of Roberts. “There,” he said, toasting her with it. “Shall we?”

    Roberts picked up the remaining one. Barry hoped to every god he could think of that it was the poisoned one. She and Magic Brian threw their wine back simultaneously.

    When Roberts put hers down, Magic Brian was smiling.

    “It’s a shame,” Magic Brian said. “I wish this could have gone differently.”

    “What do you mean?” Roberts asked.

    “Did you know, iocane powder has a peculiar effect on anything it is mixed into?” Magic Brian asked. “The resulting concoction dries extraordinarily fast. You were good, darling, but not that good.” And he smiled. He was still smiling when he toppled over onto the grass, dead.

    Without so much as twitching, Roberts approached Barry. He tensed, but all she did was tug the gag out of his mouth. He stared at her incredulously as she unsheathed her knife.

    “I guess you’re wondering how that worked,” Roberts said conversationally as she cut through the rope binding his wrists. “I poisoned both the cups. I’ve got this neat bracelet my first mate gave me that gives me extra constitution, so that nothing but a really, really strong poison can hurt me.”

    “You shouldn’t have let me go,” Barry said.

    “Why?” Roberts asked, and then doubled over as his magic missile hit her. Magic Brian had taken Barry’s wand, but it had been easy for Barry to put one hand to the side and fumble through his pockets. Barry stood, feeling angrier than he could ever remember feeling.

    “Rude,” Roberts wheezed, backing up a step or two.

    “You killed Lup!” Barry shouted. “Do you remember her?”

    “No,” Roberts said. “I kill too many people. Why should I remember one among the rest?” She looked up at him, face still irritatingly vague. “Was she your lover? You must have moved on fast, if you’re engaged to the king now.”

    “She was my true love,” Barry said, “and _you’re_ the reason she’s gone.” And, too angry to think of a spell, he shoved as hard as he could.

    As Roberts windmilled backwards and began to fall down the steep incline, the spell disguising her face vanished. The red mask fell away, and familiar brown eyes stared back at Barry.

    “As you wish!” Shouted Lup, as she fell out of sight.

    Barry stood there, frozen in shock, as Lup tumbled down the hillside. Then he yelled “Shit!” and took off running after her.

    He tripped ten feet down and went tumbling twice as fast, scraping his arm on a bramble bush and nearly breaking his glasses. When he finally hit the bottom he had to lie still for a moment before he could even think of getting up.

    Lup was staring at him, looking worried, when he finally pushed himself into a sitting position. “Babe, you okay?”

    Barry nearly started crying. _“Lup,”_ he said, because it was all he could get out. “I’m so sorry - I thought you were - how-?”

    “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Lup said. “I’ve got hella health.” She shuffled over to sit next to him, and as soon as she reached out a hand Barry pulled her in for a hug and clutched her as tightly as he could.

    “Sorry for the wait,” Lup said into the side of his neck. “I had some stuff to do. But, seriously, Barry. _Kalen?_ That’s my replacement?”

    Barry was shaking his head before she finished. “It’s not like that,” he said. “He wanted something to fix his image, and he got it into his head that a marriage would work, and then the whole thing with Phandalin happened-”

    “Sounds like a long story,” Lup said. “We should get going first - I dunno who else is on our heels.”

    Barry let go, reluctantly, and let her pull him to his feet. “But what _happened?”_ He asked as she retrieved her mask and stuffed it in a pocket. “How are you here? And why do you have an umbrella? And you called yourself the Dread Pirate Roberts-”

    “That’s all the same story,” Lup laughed, interrupting. “Come on the run with me first, and I’ll tell you everything on the way.”

    "Okay," Barry said, and took her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment your reactions to the previous chapter literally gave me new life


	3. In Which A Great Many Things, Most of Them Bad, Happen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy crap look at how fucking productive i am
> 
> even more drama in this chapter! we get a lup backstory, we get some dramatic kalen stuff, all sorts.

Lup’s ship had indeed been attacked and sunk by the Dread Pirate Roberts over two years ago. However, she had not been on it when it sank. Like the rest of Roberts’ prisoners, she was on _his_ ship, awaiting execution. She had done her best to escape, but her wand had been broken, and her smart mouth was more likely to just get her in trouble.

    “But Roberts took an interest in me, for some reason,” she explained. He had been intrigued by her refusal to be cowed, and by her avowals that she would someday return to her true love back home (at which point Barry had to take a moment to dry his eyes). “So he took me on as a cabin boy of sorts, except I’m a girl. Every night he’d run me ragged getting me to do things for him, and every night he said, ‘Well done, Lup. Goodnight. I’ll probably kill you in the morning’. Can you imagine an entire year of that?”

    But it hadn’t been all bad, Lup admitted. It was a way to stay alive, and not all of the crew were especially terrible. She had learned how to sail, and how to fence, and occasionally the opportunity arose to practice her magical skill. And in fact, at the end of the first year, he had taken her aside to speak to her privately.

    “And you know what he told me?”

    “What?”

    ‘I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts’, he had said. ‘My name is actually Lucas.’ The Dread Pirate Roberts before him had not been the real Roberts either, but his mother Maureen. The original Roberts had retired half a century ago and was living out the rest of his days in splendor on his store of looted treasure. Maureen had been specially selected by him as his successor, and had done the same with Lucas when she tired of piracy. Lucas intended to follow in both of their footsteps, and he wanted Lup to be Roberts after he was gone.

    It wasn’t difficult to make Lup into the new Dread Pirate Roberts. They sailed into port, where they hired an entirely new crew, to whom Lup was introduced as Roberts. Lucas stayed on as first mate for a few months to make sure she had the hang of things, and left when he was satisfied.

    “But I wasn’t a very good Roberts,” Lup confessed. “I don’t like killing people unless I have a really good reason for it, and Roberts isn’t supposed to leave anyone alive. So I didn’t attack very much, just let tales sort of fester. When I heard about you and Kalen, I knew I had to come back.”

    “And the umbrella?” Barry asked.

    “I made it, with the help of one of my crew. They used to be a pretty heavy-duty arcanist, and there was a lot of stuff other than piracy going on, since we did so little attacking. They helped me learn some stuff, and eventually I decided to put my skills to the test.” Lup drew the umbrella with a flourish. “It’s a wand that eats other people’s wands or magical energy when I defeat them. I call it an umbrastaff.”

    “I like it,” Barry said immediately. Lup smiled.

    “You’ve got better taste than Taako, then.”

    “Oh my god, _Taako.”_ Barry abruptly remembered the rest of the kidnapping party. “What happened?”

    “I put him to sleep.” Lup shrugged. “We fought a little, but we were both pulling our punches. He was more interested in trying to figure me out than in hurting me, I think. Lucky me.”

    Barry felt slightly guilty as he remembered how he’d attacked Lup. “Are you okay?”

    “Yeah, I told you, I’m good. I’ll rest up in a little and get all that health back.” Lup slowed and scrutinized the terrain ahead, and then laughed. “We’re making good time, too. Once we get through the fire swamp, we’ll be pretty close to where my ship is anchored.”

    “The fire swamp?” Barry paused, warily regarding the thick, grey cluster of trees ahead. “You want to go through _there?_ ”

    “Relax,” Lup said. “It’ll be fine, I promise! It can’t be that dangerous, and I know my way around fire. Trust me?”

    Barry softened. “Of course,” he said.

* * *

    As they drew closer and then took the first steps into the fire swamp, Barry explained his side of the story - wandering, helping Phandalin, and receiving Kalen’s offer. Then he told his side of his kidnapping experience. Lup listened attentively to the whole thing.

    “Good thing I got back when I did,” Lup said. “Listen - I had a whole thing planned about what I wanted to say to you about the Kalen thing, because I was honestly pretty pissed about it. But for now I’m gonna settle for getting you on my ship, and sending a message to Neverwinter calling the whole shebang off ASAP.”

    “I wasn’t really looking forward to it,” Barry admitted, grinning. “I probably ate better than I ever did in my whole life, but that was the only upside. And Kalen’s...even if he _didn’t_ murder his father, he still ordered that attack on Raven’s Roost.”

    “That was him? Sheesh. The way news about it got to me, I heard the rebellion did that.” Lup shook her head.

    “I don’t know much about the rebellion, but it definitely wasn’t them.” Barry paused, stepping carefully over a gnarled tree root. “Come to think of it, the attack might have been _against_ them specifically.”

    “What an ass,” Lup said. A strange popping noise came from the left, and she moved away so hurriedly that she nearly knocked Barry into a tree.

    “Hey,” Barry protested, as a gout of flame shot up from the ground unnervingly close to where Lup had been standing. “Oh. Never mind.”

    “There’s a reason they call it the fire swamp, babe,” Lup said. Barry laughed under his breath, and squeezed her hand a little tighter in his.

    “Come on. Let’s keep moving.”

    The fire swamp did not seem as dangerous as Barry had feared. They encountered many gouts of flame, true, but learned quickly how to guess where they would be from the popping sound that warned of them. There was a mysterious sandy patch that Barry made to walk through, and was buried up to the waist in before Lup could grab him and haul him out.

    “I think we’ve conquered almost everything this forest has to offer,” Barry told Lup as he helped her scramble up over a sharp incline that had blocked their path. “Or learned how to avoid it, at least.”

    “Yeah?” Lup shoved her hair out of her face as she joined him, and then linked their hands again. “The fire’s not bad, and the sand’s pretty obvious. What else is there?”

    “R.O.U.S.es?” Barry offered.

    “What?”

    “Rodents Of Unusual Size.”

    “Oh, those. I’ll be honest, babe, I don’t think they exist.”

    That was roughly when an enormous rat leaped out of a tree and onto Lup.

    Both of them yelled as Lup was tackled to the ground. Jolted by the fall, the umbrastaff came unhooked and rolled towards a sandy patched. Barry lunged towards it. He just barely caught it before it fell into the pit.

    “A little help?” Lup yelled. Barry whipped around. She was still wrestling with the rat, which was almost half the size of her. There was no way to hit it without hitting her. And he’d already hurt her and thrown her down a huge hill. Barry hesitated.

    Lup took one hand away to grope for her knife. The rat took the opportunity and bit down hard. Barry panicked when she screamed and grabbed the rat by the tail, trying to physically pull it off.

    Lup swore loudly and vehemently. Luckily stabbing the rat worked in her favor. It let go of her shoulder to scream shrilly. She and Barry combined managed to shove it off. Unluckily, the rat found its footing fast. It went for Barry, murder in its beady eyes.

    Lup dove for the rat, knocking it off course. Its claws scratched her arms viciously. She strained to keep it at arm’s length - and then from nearby heard a familiar popping sound.

    Lup wrapped her arms around the rat and rolled straight towards the sound. Barry was yelling in the background, but she wasn’t about to be distracted.

    The fire roared up. The rat screamed. Lup yelled, too. She’d miscalculated - the fire immolated the rat’s head, yes, but it also licked eagerly at her arm.

    Lup let Barry pull her away as the fire died down. She clutched her arm to her chest, wincing. The sleeve was pretty much destroyed, and the skin underneath was shiny with a large burn.

    “This is my favorite jacket,” she said faintly.

    “I don’t know any healing spells,” Barry said, horrified at his own uselessness. “Oh, man. Is there anyone on your ship who could help?”

    “Yeah, duh, we’ve got a healer.” The bite on Lup’s shoulder twinged unpleasantly, and she winced. “Ow. Crap. C’mon, let’s move.”

    “Hold on.” Barry pulled his shirt out from where he’d tucked it into his waistband and tore a long strip off the end. “Let me at least try.” Patiently, Lup sat there and winced while he carefully tied the makeshift bandage around the burn.

    “You sure your fancy clothes can stand to be destroyed?” She asked, trying for playfulness.

    “It’s worth it,” Barry replied absently. “It’s for you.” He finished tying the last bit of cloth in place and nodded. “Okay. Now let’s go.”

* * *

    The fire swamp was large, but it did not go on forever. It reached almost to the shores of a huge river, which marked one of the borders of Faerûn itself. Barry had been taken very far away from Neverwinter, though admittedly neither the city nor Faerûn were very big.

    At the shores of the river, however, the strange gray trees and undergrowth of the swamp transitioned into brighter colors. The ground became more solid. Green grass began to appear, and the bushes and plants sometimes bore colorful flowers or berries. The trees became brown, crowned with a canopy of green leaves.

    The scenery did not leave much of an impression on Barry and Lup; they were more occupied with the contingent of horses blocking the way to the river.

    Both of them slowed. Barry’s heart sank; he could recognize both the crest embroidered onto the horse’s saddle blankets, as well as the face of the man leading the group. It was Kalen’s chief enforcer, the Count.

    “This is friendly,” Lup said. She was leaning against Barry and trying to hide it.

    “Did you expect otherwise?” replied the Count. “Surrender.”

    “You’re surrendering?” Lup said. “Sure, I accept.”

    The Count did not smile. “You’re brave,” he said, “that much is obvious. But the King will not be kind if you don’t comply.”

    “What are you gonna do?” Lup asked. “Kill us? You won’t kill Barry, and you can’t kill me, so that’s not going to be anything but unpleasant for both of us.”

    “Do you think you can outrun us? It will not work.”

    “But,” Lup said, “we know the ways of survival in the fire swamp. Maybe we’ll just run back in and live there.”

    While Lup was being sarcastic at the Count, Barry was looking around. There were faint traces of movement in the forest around them. While he watched, two men with crossbows came out from behind trees to the left and right of them, and on the left there was an additional archer. The Count and all three of the guards had swords at their hips.

    “If you do not surrender,” the Count said, “I will be forced to use every manner of persuasion at my disposal.”

    “Oh, go _right_ ahead-” Lup began to draw the umbrastaff.

    “Wait!” Barry yelled. “Will you promise not to hurt her?”

    “What?” said the Count.

    “What?” said Lup, turning to look at him. Barry swallowed nervously.

    “If I go back with you,” he said, “will you promise not to hurt her?”

    “Babe,” Lup said, shocked and hurt. Barry turned towards her.

    “I thought you were dead once,” he said in a low voice. “If anything happened to you again - Lup, please, you’ve been hurt enough. I can’t go through that again. You can go back to your ship and get healed, and I’ll - I’ll explain things to Kalen and call it off. I promise, I’ll see you again.”

    Lup’s mouth was a tight, thin line. “We don’t have to-”

    “I accept your surrender,” the Count said. He gestured sharply at one of the guards, who went trotting over to Barry. Barry looked at the Count instead.

    “This woman is a sailor on the ship _Revenge,_ ” he said, hoping the Count did not know the stories of the Dread Pirate Roberts very well. “Will you swear that you’ll see her back to her ship safely?”

    The Count nodded shortly. Barry turned back to Lup, who still looked tense and upset.

    “I promise it won’t take over two years this time,” he said. Lup didn’t even laugh.

    “I don’t trust Kalen,” she said, “and who knows what kind of people he has working for him. Are you sure?”

    “Even if it doesn’t work out, there’s nothing that could keep me from you,” Barry said vehemently. Lup worried her lip between her teeth, and at length nodded.

    “As long as you promise,” she said, and kissed him. Barry leaned into it, feeling Lup’s warm hand curl around the base of his skull. They only broke apart when air became a necessity, though Lup kept it going longer than necessary purely because the Count impatiently cleared his throat.

    Slowly, reluctant to follow even his own plan if it involved leaving Lup, Barry hauled himself up onto the horse behind the guard. As the guard flicked the reins, Barry turned to watch Lup slowly grow smaller and smaller, and eventually vanish in the thicket of trees.

    “So,” said the guard conversationally as they rode. With a jolt, Barry realized it was Avi he was riding with. “True love, huh?”

    “Yeah,” Barry said, around the sudden lump in his throat.

    “Lucky,” Avi said. “I hope it goes well with Kalen, man.”

    “Thanks.” Barry had the worst feeling that he was going to need every ounce of good luck Avi could give him.

* * *

    When Barry finally vanished from sight, Lup focused her attention on the Count. “Can I put in a request for someone else to take me to my ship?”

    “No,” the Count said.

    “I thought I’d ask.” Lup shrugged, and then wince as the bite wound made itself known again. “But you’re not gonna take me to my ship, are you?”

    “I highly doubt it,” the Count said, and signaled with his six-fingered hand to someone out of sight. Lup felt a wave of exhaustion wash over her. She struggled for a few moments, but eventually, she succumbed to the same version of a sleep spell she’d used against her brother, and fell to the ground.

    The Count, who was of course none other than Sazed, regarded Lup’s crumpled form disdainfully, as two of the crossbowmen came down to pick her up and load her onto somebody’s horse.

    “Hm,” he said, and then, “Yeemick, take her to the Pit of Despair. I’ll attend to her later.”

    “Yes, sir,” said Yeemick. “Anything else?”

    “Just set her up in the Machine. _Unhurt,_ ” Sazed warned. “There’s just no point in using the machine if they’re already half dead.”

    “Yes, sir,” said Yeemick, sulkily. “I’ll see to it.”

    “Good,” said Sazed. “I must report on the day’s events to the king.”

* * *

    “Ah, Sazed,” Kalen said as Sazed entered his office. Sazed had taken a slight detour on the way back to Neverwinter, first back along the path that led to the top of the Cliffs of Insanity, then to the Pit of Despair to check and make sure Yeemick had followed his orders. By the time he had managed to make his way back to the castle, daylight was fading fast. “How goes things?”

    “I’ve found Barry Bluejeans, sire,” Sazed said. “He was rescued and retrieved alive.” He waited for Kalen to finish cursing under his breath before continuing. “I’ve had the woman he was with taken to the Pit of Despair.”

    “Why is it,” Kalen sighed, “that all of _your_ schemes work so well? You brilliantly obtain poison for me just when I need it most, and your Pit never has so much as a hitch in its workings. Meanwhile that damned Black Spider can’t even feed my husband-to-be to his pet spider properly. I tell you, one gets almost jealous sometimes.”

    “I believe there’s a reason for the Black Spider’s failure,” Sazed offered. “I found his body near the fire swamp.”

    “His body? What in the god’s names happened?”

    “I can’t say for sure. I believe this woman defeated each of the three kidnappers you hired individually, in order to rescue Bluejeans.”

    “And what happened to them?”

    Sazed shrugged. “I found only traces of the other two.”

    “Idiots,” Kalen grumbled. “I’ll just have to find some other way to have him killed, then. If you have any ideas, be sure to let me know.”

    Sazed nodded. “And the woman?”

    “You say she was with Barry when you found him?”

    “I did. He returned with us in order to prevent us from harming her.”

    Kalen thought for a moment. “Ask any questions whose answers you think I may be interested in,” he said. “The rest I leave up to you. Go.”

    “Sire,” Sazed said, and bowed, and left.

* * *

    Lup woke abruptly.

    The sleep spell had worn off, obviously, but the muzzy feeling remained. Then a spike of pain in her shoulder abruptly cleared it away, making her wince. Strangely, the pain was followed by a soothing, cool feeling.

    Lup looked to the side. A pale man with a shock of red hair that looked like it had had most of the color washed out was bent over her. Oddly, he was patting her wounds with a damp cloth. Lup tried to raise her arm to see how her burn was doing, and discovered that her wrists were fastened to the table she was lying on.

    “Uh,” she said, also realizing that her coat, umbrastaff and knife were gone, “dude, what the fuck.”

    “You’re awake!” The pale man started violently and dropped the cloth.

    “Where’s my stuff?” Lup demanded. She made a more rigorous self-examination and realized that a bunch of weird sticky things attached to wires were fastened to her face and chest and arms. Her ankles felt like they were fastened down as well, and she was pretty sure her shirt had been unbuttoned so that the bite wound was exposed.

    The room she was in was strange. A high ceiling soared above her, all dull brown and black and smooth wood. To her left, a strange contraption rose to nearly half the ceiling’s height. To her right was the man, and a table and chair, and a staircase that vanished somewhere around a bend. Candles glittered in holders in several places, providing dim light.

    “I had to take it away,” the man said. “Uh, my name’s Cam. Sorry. I just do what I’m told.” He had picked up the cloth and started patting her shoulder with it again.

    “Why are you doing that?” She asked. “Where am I?”

    “The Count said you should be in good shape,” Cam said. “I...well, I know what for, but I’m not going to say. You’re not going to like it.”

    “I already don’t like a lot of what’s going on.” Lup desperately wished that she had the umbrastaff, so that she could blast her way out. The restraints made her nervous and the sticky things were itchy and made her more nervous. “Tell me where I am.”

    “It’s called the Pit of Despair.”

    Lup stared at him.

    “Really,” Cam said. “It’s really called that, I promise. I didn’t name it. Sazed did.”

    “Sazed?”

    “I mean the Count! The Count named it.”

    Distantly, a door opened. As Cam turned around, Lup strained to look at whoever had come in. She couldn’t see them until they rounded the bend, at which point she easily recognized the six-fingered Count.

    “Cam,” said Sazed, sounding bored. “Status?”

    “Well, the bite’s not infected, and I put some stuff on the burn-”

    “One word, Cam. How many times do I have to remind you?”

    “Status is fine,” Cam said meekly. Lup watched Sazed approach warily, and when he came within a foot she said,

    “That’s far enough."

    Sazed smiled. “You’re hardly in a place to make demands,” he said. “In fact I guess you don’t really know what kind of situation you’re in.”

    Lup stayed silent. Sazed came closer, lingering by the head of the table she was lying on.

    “It’s strange,” he said. “You look quite like someone I met a long time ago. I know for a fact you can’t be him, but the resemblance is uncanny.” He looked at her for several long moments, while Lup glared back. “It may comfort you to know that your doppelgänger is probably dead.”

    “What!” Lup cried. She had seen Taako only hours before - a day at most. What could have happened in between now and then? Sazed smirked, which only infuriated her more. Had he done something to her brother? She rattled her restraints, trying to budge them with pure strength. It didn’t work.

    “Do you know what this machine does?” Sazed asked, changing the subject. Lup said nothing. “Maybe I should start earlier than that in its history. I’m sure you’ve heard, however distantly, of Lucas Miller.”

    “Lucas?” Lup blurted incredulously, despite herself. Lucas had retired years ago. She’d assumed he was still enjoying himself with the remnants of stolen treasure.

    “You know him?” Sazed raised his eyebrows. “How impressive. Then you must know of his skill with machines, and his recent notoriety with those machines in Rockport." Sazed raised his gaze, raising also a hand to stroke the wood of the contraption. "He built this for me. I consider it his best work yet. It’s a shame what happened to his mother, but Lucas saw the value of working for me in the end, when faced with the alternatives.”

    Lup kept her mouth shut this time, while her mind raced. What had happened to Maureen? And what had Lucas done?

    “It’s a truly remarkable work of science,” Sazed said, voice growing softer. “Shall I show you?”

    He moved something just out of Lup’s sight, but if she strained to look she could see a tall board with different numbers on it, going up into the hundreds. There was a thin moving selector, which was currently pointing at _1_.

    Sazed pulled something that went _thunk_ (a lever, maybe?) and the waterwheel attached to the machine started turning, creating a rhythmic splashing noise.

    Lup opened her mouth to ask what it was supposed to do, and then the pain struck her.

* * *

    Barry had to insist, vehemently, to three different people that he needed to speak to Kalen before he was finally escorted to Kalen’s offices, two days after his return. Kalen barely looked up when he entered, but he shuffled whatever he was working on quickly out of sight and then stood up.

    “I’m relieved to see you’re safe,” he said. “What a relief that this kidnapping business lasted for barely a day! I’ve been sorting through the fallout. I apologize if that meant you were prevented from seeing me.”

    “That’s okay,” Barry said, slightly mollified. “I wanted to talk to you, actually, about something related to that.”

    “Of course.” Kalen looked at him expectantly.

    “When I was rescued,” Barry said, “it was by someone I thought I’d never see again. Uh, I - I mentioned Lup to you, briefly, except I didn’t use her name. But she was my true love, and I thought she died years and years ago, except she came to rescue me as soon as she heard what had happened. And when I agreed to your proposal, I told you I was already in love, and we both knew that going in. But now that I know she’s alive...I just don’t think I can go through with this. I can’t possibly marry anyone else now that being with her is an option again.”

    Kalen did not interrupt while Barry was speaking, nor did his face show a single flicker of emotion.

    “This was the woman the Count found with you?” He asked when Barry had finished.

    “Yeah, that was her.”

    Kalen nodded slowly. “You wish to call off the wedding so that you can return to her properly.”

    “Yes, exactly.”

    “Well,” Kalen said, “I of course support your efforts. But you’ll have to get in touch with her first - the ship _Revenge_ set sail for Kara-Tar this morning.”

    Stricken, for several moments Barry could do nothing but stare at Kalen with his mouth hanging open.

    “She left?” He asked weakly. Why would Lup have sailed on? Had she taken his decision to return to Kalen to spare her that badly? He’d tried to make her understand that he wasn’t leaving her for Kalen, and he thought she had, but maybe - maybe she’d just pretended. Maybe her crew had set sail without permission. There had to be _some_ other reason for it.

    “Apparently,” Kalen said, ignorant of Barry’s mental turmoil. “Perhaps your love is not as strong as you thought.”

    Barry was shaking his head before Kalen finished. “No,” he said. “It must be some kind of mistake.”

    “If you’re sure,” Kalen said. “But no one knows which way the _Revenge_ is sailing.” He paused just long enough that Barry started to sink a little into despair. “I may be able to help, however. I shall send a message to the captain of my fleet to send the four fastest ships in my fleet in four directions. One of them will have to happen upon the _Revenge_ sooner or later.”

    “Oh,” Barry said, taken aback by the offer. “I - _thanks._ You’re not angry?”

    “I’m sure there are plenty of young people in this country ready to marry for the greater good,” Kalen said. “If love beckons, then it must be hearkened to.”

    “Thanks,” Barry said fervently, so relieved he did not take the time to wonder about Kalen’s sudden appreciation for emotion.

    “However,” Kalen said, “if you receive no response, I hope you will consider seeing your bargain through.”

    Barry hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “Like I said, knowing I still have a chance with her-”

    “Do you?” Kalen raised one eyebrow. “She has left the country without you. Perhaps the intervening years have not been kind to her feelings for you.” As Barry tried to come up with a good reply, Kalen stood up. “You made a deal with me, Barry. I would appreciate it if you kept it, especially when your reason for breaking it might be ‘because you don’t want to’.”

    Barry did not think ‘I would appreciate it’ actually meant that Kalen wanted Barry to agree just for Kalen’s sake. It sounded an awful lot like a threat.

    “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “ _If_ Lup never gets back to me, I’ll keep my end of the bargain.” The wedding was in two weeks. Surely one of the four fastest ships in the royal fleet could find the _Revenge_ and return before then.

    “That’s all I ask,” Kalen said, with a self-satisfied smile. “You may go.”

    As Barry left, Kalen’s captain of the guard entered. Captain Bane, who by a strange working of fate also had the first name captain and would never allow himself to be promoted higher, especially by Kalen, had originally been a police officer from Goldcliff. What very few people knew was that Kalen had attacked the city specifically because Bane had refused to enter his employ. After weeks of siege, Bane had relented, in order to save his city. Now, however reluctantly, he obeyed Kalen’s every order for fear of a second strike on Goldcliff.

    “Captain Bane,” Kalen said. “Just the man I was looking for. Come here.”

    “What is it, sire?” Dutifully, Bane came to stand in front of the desk.

    “I have heard nasty rumors recently, Bane,” Kalen said. “My spies have reported to me that an attack from the rebellion may come on the night of my wedding. More importantly, Barry specifically has been threatened.”

    “That’s terrible, sire!” Bane said, and for once he actually meant it. Nobody liked Kalen much, but Barry was a charismatic man as well as genuinely friendly, which was a first for anybody who worked for either Kalen or had worked for his father. He had made a lot of friends at the palace.

    “Exactly,” Kalen said, either not noticing or ignoring the genuine emotion in Bane’s voice. “On the night of the wedding, and indeed from now on, you must make sure that there are as many guards at the gates as possible. _Nobody_ should be able to make it in. I don’t care how many guards are left inside - it won’t matter, as long as nobody is able to get in.”

    Bane nodded. Kalen continued. “I also need you to clear out the Thieves’ Forest. It’s far too full of thieves, and they might be supporting this rebellion. The last thing I need, Bane, is more trouble on my hands.”

    “Of course, sire,” said Bane, far less sincerely.

    “Hire a brute squad and see it done by the end of the week.”

    “Yes, sire.” Bane bowed, slightly higher than was strictly polite, and made his exit.

* * *

    Bane didn’t like it, but he got his job done. A brute squad was quickly assembled from a few castle guards and volunteers from Neverwinter, and they marched on the Thieves’ Forest, which lay on the outskirts of the city.

    The Thieves’ Forest did not actually refer to the whole forest. Mostly it was a ramshackle encampment within the forest where various types (ranging from pickpockets to murderers) could have a safe place to hide, find work, and occasionally practice and refine their craft.

    Normally, magical types did not frequent it.

    A blast of concussive force threw two men ten feet backwards. Another nearby was laughing himself sick and looked relatively panicked about it.

    “I said leave me alone!” Taako yelled, readying his wand for another go at the brute squad volunteers. The guards had quickly scattered, pretending to run after the various other thieves that were fleeing into the wilder parts of the woods. “I’ve got enough to worry about without a load of you coming in and tearing up my stuff and trying to arrest me!”

    “Taako!” Said a bright and familiar voice. Taako blinked, and turned. Magnus was standing a few feet away, holding two thieves by the scruff. He appeared to have forgotten he was holding them. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Taako demanded. “We were supposed to meet up here if something went sideways, you know that!”

    “Yeah,” Magnus said, “but didn’t you hear? Magic Brian’s dead.”

    “Shit,” Taako said. Magnus dropped the thieves and came over to him. “What are you doing here, then?”

    “I still needed money, so I signed up for the brute squad,” Magnus said. “I figured anyone here probably deserved it.”

    Taako groaned, and slumped against the wall of a nearby hut. “What are we gonna do now?” He asked nobody in particular.

    “Uh,” Magnus said, “I have an idea, actually.”

    “Let’s hear it. I have literally nothing better to do. Scratch that, I don’t even care what it is, I’ll do anything. Let’s go.”

    “But I haven’t-”

    “You can explain on the way.”

    Doubtfully, Magnus looked around, and saw more guards approaching through the trees. “Yep, never mind, you're right, let’s go.”

* * *

    “You want to crash Kalen’s wedding and make sure it doesn’t happen just so you can ruin something for him?”

    “Not _just_ because of that,” Magnus said. “I heard some guards talking on the way down here, and apparently that Barry dude tried to call it all off. I dunno why it’s still going through, but the way I see it, it’s a good deed if we’re getting this guy out of a marriage he doesn’t want.”

    “Right,” Taako said skeptically.

    “Well, you knew him. Do you think he wants to marry Kalen?”

    Taako looked away. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in years. I didn’t even know he liked guys.”

    “He never had a boyfriend or anything?”

    “He was in love with my sister.”

    “Ohhhh,” Magnus, who knew more about Taako than anyone who wasn't Lup or Barry, said. “That’s rough.” They walked in silence for several minutes, then Magnus said, “Oh, guess who I saw with that royal captain who was recruiting people to go trash the Thieves’ Forest.”

    “I don’t know. Who?”

    “A dude who looked official and had six fingers.”

    Taako nearly leaped out of his shoes. _"_ _What?_ Why didn’t you say that first?” He demanded.

    “I forgot.”

    “You _forgot?_ No, stop, I don’t care.” Taako paced in a tight circle. The thought of finally catching up to Sazed had sent adrenaline rushing through him. “We need someone else. Both of us are shit at plans, there’s no way we can track down and kill a count on our own.”

    “Uh, kill?” Magnus questioned, but Taako barely heard it. He had stopped dead, an idea occurring to him.

    “The lady in red,” he whispered. He turned to face Magnus abruptly. “It’ll be perfect! She defeated both of us and killed Magic Brian. She’s _got_ to be skilled enough to break in and find him.”

    “Okay,” Magnus said, “as long as we still do the wedding thing-”

    “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Taako interrupted. “All we have to do is find the lady in red.”

    They stared at each other for a moment.

    “Do you have any ideas?” Magnus asked.

    “No,” Taako admitted. “We’ll figure something out. C’mon, let's go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> your comments bring me to life and give me +10 to writing speed. comment to increase the chances of a new chapter every day.


	4. In Which Even Worse Things Happen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had to take a moment and go like....do i have a whole chapter's worth of material already? the answer is yes, probably, so here i go wheeee

Lup languished in the Pit of Despair for over a week. After the first day, in which she’d been subjected to the Machine only once, Sazed had interrogated her for hours. He’d thrown in a few questions about the rebellion, of which she knew little, but mostly they were about pain. How did she feel, after having one whole year of her life sucked away? Did it hurt? In what way did it hurt? What parts of her body hurt specifically? And so on and so on.

    It had hurt in an indescribable, all-encompassing way. One year of her life wasn’t much, as far as elvish lifespans went, but the pain - that might kill her far sooner. Sazed had actually expressed his delight at having an elf to experiment on, with so many years to safely leech away from her without fear of losing his test subject. To her relief, he had left without using it on her again, leaving Cam to tend to her.

    Cam was the only one who ever showed anything like mercy - thought of course his every action depended on Sazed’s orders. He fed Lup (the barest amount necessary for survival, it seemed to her) and gave her water, and occasionally checked on her wounds. Lup, still restrained, didn’t have much of a choice except to let him.

    Cam had told her his own story in bits and pieces, whenever Sazed was gone. He hated the Pit, but he couldn’t leave. Sazed had bound Cam to his service years ago, summoning a pair of terrible, magical elves to lay a curse on him. If he ever went more than a mile away from the Pit, he would immediately drop dead. Cam barely dared to leave the Pit at all for fear of what might happen to him.

    Lup was hard-pressed to be sympathetic towards him, but he was so earnest that she couldn’t find it in herself to hate him, either.

    She was subjected to the Machine two more times while she remained in Sazed’s grip, two more years gone from her total lifespan. Never was even the tiniest opportunity for escape presented. Sazed was, unfortunately, very good at what he did.

    “Hey,” Cam whispered, one night when the residual ache still thrummed in Lup’s body and prevented her from finding sleep. “I know this is terrible - but don’t give up. You’ve still got a chance to make it out of here.”

    “Why don’t you unlock the cuffs and let me go, then?” Lup asked.

    “Oh, I - I can’t. He’d kill me.” Cam swallowed. “He wouldn’t even bother taking me too far outside, unless he wanted me to suffer. He’d just kill me right in here.”

    Lup couldn’t dredge up even the tiniest bit of resentment. Cam valued his own life over hers - whatever, so did everyone else. She hurt too much to put energy into disliking him.

    “Whatever,” Lup said. “Just be quiet.”

* * *

    The day of the wedding dawned clear and blue. The anticipation for it had swelled nearly to the breaking point, and the actual event was crammed full of Neverwinter citizens eager to see it happen. Afterwards, Barry was-

* * *

    “That can’t be right!”

    “I’m sorry?” Lucretia lowered the book.

    “How could he marry Kalen?” Angus looked horrified. “I thought he was going to be rescued! Taako and Magnus were going to save Lup so they could rescue him! This can’t be right!”

    “Angus, you’ve been very good about not interrupting. Please continue not to. Do you want me to finish or not?”

    “But-”

    “Angus.”

    “...Okay.”

* * *

    Afterwards, Barry was presented to the citizens of Neverwinter, still in his uncomfortably fancy suit. He mostly stood and let himself be stared at, while the crowd cheered. It felt wrong, but he couldn’t put a finger on why.

    The cheering crowd faltered. Barry understood why after a moment; someone was booing. Loudly.

    “Shame!” A woman hobbled into sight, white hair wisping around her wrinkled face. “How can you cheer for him? He had true love and gave it up for a bargain with a cruel king!” She booed him again. Everyone else had gone silent. Barry wondered desperately why the guards weren’t doing anything, but mostly he felt hot with guilt. “What kind of man gives up true love like that? Like it was garbage?”

    “I do love Lup,” Barry said, out of a need to say _something_.

    “Yet you marry another? Shame! Prince of shame! Prince of garbage!”

    “But-” The old woman’s booing drowned out Barry’s protests. He wished, desperately, that he were anywhere else, and then suddenly he was blinking up at the canopy of his bed. It had been a dream.

* * *

    Angus heaved a sigh of relief and sank back into the pillows. Lucretia smiled, and kept reading.

* * *

    As soon as he woke up properly, he threw on a dressing gown and rushed to see Kalen. It was early in the morning, but Kalen was already in his office, poring over papers. He looked up, startled, when Barry entered, but didn’t get the chance to speak.

    “I can’t marry you,” Barry said bluntly. “Not now, not ever, not even if Lup never speaks to me again. I’ve been deluding myself into thinking I could do it, but I absolutely can’t, and I won’t. Call it off.”

    For a moment, Kalen simply stared. It was perhaps the first time in his life he had ever been truly taken aback by anything.

    “I think you are overtired,” Kalen said eventually. “Wait until you can think clearly.”

    “I just woke up.”

    “Then you are still half asleep.”

    “I am _not,”_ Barry said, “and I’m never going to marry you.”

    “You do not have a choice,” Kalen replied smoothly. “This has been obvious from the start, though you may not have realized otherwise. I took you in and granted you all the opportunities and rewards of the position you would soon occupy as my husband, and you will not throw that away. The people expect us to marry, and we _will._ Then we shall set sail with all the ships of my fleet as an accompaniment, and we shall get to know each other better or at least learn to live with each other, which you _will._ Like it or not.”

    Barry glared. Eventually, he said stiffly, “All but four.”

    “I’m sorry?” Kalen stared at him blankly.

    “All but four,” Barry repeated. Realization was dawning slowly. “You sent the four fastest after Lup.”

    “Of course.” Kalen recovered quickly, but the damage had been done.

    “You lied to me,” Barry accused. “Did you ever send ships after her? Did she even sail away at all?”

    “I would advise you to keep your temper,” Kalen said smoothly. “What does it matter? We are to be wed in little more than a day or two. There is no time now.”

    “It matters to me!” Barry shouted. “I should have known. What could you possibly know or understand about true love? You’re a cold, callous man who wants nothing more than for everyone to do what he wants all the time because you can’t stand to ever be challenged! Has it occurred to you that you’re just _wrong?”_

Kalen slapped him. It was not a gentle reprimand, but a real, hard, angry slap. There was an unkind light burning in his eyes.

    The door opened. “Sire,” one of the guards said, “we heard yelling-”

    “Nothing you need to worry about,” Kalen said icily. “Please take Barry here back to his room and lock him in. Be sure to confiscate his wand first.”

    “You can’t do this!” Barry yelled. His hand was pressed to his cheek.

    “My dear,” Kalen said, and it was the only time he’d ever used language like that towards Barry, though the effect was ruined by his glacier-cold tone. “I’m the king. I can do whatever I like.”

    Barry gathered himself up to his full height, understanding and anger filling him to the brim. “You’re a callous, shallow person,” he said, “and when the rebellion gets to this castle, you’re going to die unmourned.”

    Kalen’s expression hardened. He gestured sharply, and the guard, who was especially loyal to Kalen, clasped Barry’s arm in a too-tight grip and dragged him out.

    Kalen stood there in his office for several moments, breathing heavily. Then, appearing to make up his mind, he turned on his heel and stormed out.

* * *

    Lup jumped when the door slammed open, or would have were she not so tightly restrained. Sazed, who was already there taking notes on the most recent bout of torture, frowned and turned towards the stairs. Harsh footsteps were echoing down them, and when a tall, grey-haired man came into sight Sazed leaped to his feet.

    “Sire,” he said, “what-” And got no further. Kalen paid him no attention at all, striding over to where Lup was lying. He stared down into her face. Lup glared back, in no mood to be menaced by a stranger.

    “You have caused me a lot of trouble,” Kalen bit out. Lup’s forehead creased in confusion. “Your _true love_ seemed malleable, but he is a constant annoyance ever since _you_ came back into the picture. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were at the heart of the rebellion, too. They say Julia Waxmen was the true leader, but I ensured she was dead. A woman scorned could be a good replacement.”

    “Fuck off,” Lup said.

Kalen’s face creased in fury. He grabbed the selector on the tall board of numbers and flung it up as high as it would go.

    “Not that high!” Sazed yelled, as Kalen pulled the lever. The waterwheel jerked into motion, and the various parts of the Machine began to move.

    Lup _screamed._

* * *

    “Stop.” Taako stopped abruptly, less out of a desire to listen to Magnus and more in an attempt to avoid crashing into his friend’s arm. “Do you hear that?”

    Taako listened closely. The closer he listened, the more unnerved he got.

    “It sounds like someone screaming,” he said.

    “I was afraid of that,” said Magnus, and took off running.

    “Hey!” Taako yelled. “You don’t even know where it’s coming from!” He hesitated, and then started running, too. “Wait for me!”

* * *

In the Thieves’ Forest, people huddled deeper into their hiding places as the scream echoed past. In Neverwinter, the noise of the city faded for just a second as people noticed it and were filled with fear for reasons even they could not have named. In the castle, guards exchanged nervous glances.

    In the Pit of Despair, as Lup’s body stilled and the Machine creaked to a stop, Sazed said, “What a waste.” He was not talking about Lup; he was speaking of his own experiments.

    “It doesn’t matter,” Kalen said. “You can find someone else. Let this be an end to all this nonsense with the rebellion and Barry Bluejeans.”

    Sazed cast Kalen a sideways look. He wanted to ask if Kalen’s troubles really required throwing his plans so dangerously out of whack; but kings were kings, and he was only a count in the long run. He resigned himself to settling for Cam; the assistant wasn’t worth all it took to keep him fed.

    “Dispose of the body,” he said aloud. Cam was not in sight, not that he’d noticed, but he tended to always be around. After all, where else would he go?

    As both Kalen and Sazed left, Lup stared sightlessly at the ceiling.

* * *

    “I think you read that bit wrong.”

    Lucretia scanned the page. “No, that’s how it’s written.”

    “No,” Angus said patiently, as though she had missed something very obvious. “You made it sound like Lup died.”

    “She did.”

    Angus stared at Lucretia, eyes wide and liquid. “She can’t _die,_ ” he said. “What about Barry? What’s gonna happen when Taako finds her? Isn’t she supposed to be the main character?”

    “Sometimes people die, Angus,” Lucretia said gently. “Don’t they in your mystery books?”

    “But _Caleb Cleveland_ doesn’t die!” Angus cried. “Geez, aunt Lucretia! Why did you read me this book? It’s terrible!” And he threw himself down onto one of his many pillows, pressing it against his face, and cried.

    Lucretia closed the book, looking somewhat alarmed. She reached out a hand towards Angus, as if meaning to comfort him, but then withdrew it. Quietly, she got up and retreated into the hallway.

    After about an hour, when the noise from Angus’s room had faded, Lucretia dared to peek back in. He was sitting up again, and looked far calmer.

    “Please finish the story,” Angus said quietly. “I want to know how it ends.”

    Lucretia nodded, and entered the room. She sat in her chair by Angus’s bedside, and slowly flipped through the book, finding the place where they had left off. All the pages, Angus noticed, were not only handwritten, but lined like journal paper.

* * *

    It was difficult for Taako to keep pace with Magnus normally, but given that Magnus was more heavily armored than him, it tended to even out. Still, it was Magnus who reached the skinny, pale man pushing a wheelbarrow first.

    “Hey!” Magnus said. “Have you seen a lady in red anywhere? Or maybe whoever that was that was screaming like that?”

    “You knew her?” The man blurted out, and then looked terrified. Largely, this was because Taako had drawn his wand and was menacing him with it.

    “Tell us where she is,” Taako demanded. The man shook his head mutely. “Magnus, persuade him.”

    “Sure,” Magnus said, and went in for a threatening blow to the head. The pale man collapsed to the ground.

    “What the hell was that?” Taako demanded.

    “I don’t know! I didn’t mean to do it that hard.” Magnus looked embarrassed. “We can probably figure out where he was coming from on our own.”

    _“You_ do it, if you’re so smart.” Taako crossed his arms. Magnus looked at the man, then looked in the direction he had been going.

    “I don’t think there’s anything very close to here.”

    “Maybe he’s got a hidden dungeon. I don’t know.”

    Magnus looked at the forest around them. Then he unsheathed his sword and held it in both hands out in front of him, closing his eyes.

    “Are you praying?” Taako asked incredulously.

    “I can use my sword like a dowsing rod,” Magnus replied, eyes still tightly shut. “I can probably get just enough divine interference to help...”

    “What, you think Istus is gonna reach down and point your sword in the right direction?”

    “Maybe!”

    Taako rolled his eyes and bent down to see if the pale man had any money on him. He was disappointed, though he did find a ring of keys, which seemed as though it would be helpful.

The sword raised ever so slightly in Magnus’s hands. It was impossible to tell if he had lifted it or not. He opened his eyes to give Taako a smug grin. “See?”

    Taako opened his mouth to reply. Magnus started walking before he could say anything, following the direction his sword swung. It stayed steady, and led him straight into a tree.

    Taako started laughing. Magnus lowered his sword, embarrassed, and leaned against the tree with a sigh, thunking his forehead into one of the huge gnarled knots on its trunk.

    The door in the trunk opened, nearly sending him tumbling down the stairs it revealed. Taako stopped laughing.

    “See!” Magnus said smugly again. Taako was already shoving past him to get down the stairs. In the few seconds it took for Magnus to recover his balance, Taako’s footsteps had pattered into the distance.

    “She’s probably not going to vanish if you get down there too slow!” Magnus called after him. “This looks like a spooky dungeon! I think she might have been taken captive.”

    The stairs went on longer than he expected. Whatever this place was, it was _very_ secret. Magnus walked down them carefully, as the individual stairs were difficult to see in the low light, and was unduly relieved when he finally saw light and the floor at the bottom.

    The room he entered was strange and creepy. There was a hulking contraption on the other side, but more importantly, a table on which a lady in red pants and boots was lying on. Her face wasn’t disguised anymore, Magnus saw as he came closer.

    Taako was on his knees in front of the table.

    Magnus opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, and then he came close enough to make out the details of the lady’s face.

    For a moment he panicked and thought it was somehow _Taako_ on the table - how else could the uncanny similarity be explained? But then he put the pieces together and realized that the picture they formed was terrible.

    “Oh,” he said, looking at Lup on the table and then at Taako on the ground. _“Oh.”_

“I don’t understand,” Taako said brokenly. There was a tear slipping down his face, but he didn’t appear to notice it. “How could it be her?”

    “I don’t know,” Magnus said, wishing there was something more useful to say. There were little cups stuck to Lup’s skin all over, the purpose of which he couldn’t guess but assumed it was terrible. Gently, he closed Lup’s eyes. Taako made a choked, sobbing sound and put his face in his hands.

    Magnus carefully pried off all of the sticky things off Lup while Taako cried bitterly. Conscious of his friend’s acute privacy issues, he mostly pretended he didn’t notice anything happening. He was glad Taako wasn’t looking, though. Some of the sticky things were in awkward places, like under Lup’s shirt or...well, all of the awkward places were under her shirt. There were a lot of places in that area that were awkward to touch on a living person, much less a dead person. Your best friend’s dead sister who had mysteriously survived her reported death years ago only to really be dead when he finally reunited with her didn’t even enter into the equation.

    Magnus didn’t have the keys, nor had he noticed that there _were_ keys in their possession, so instead of unlocking the restraints he crouched down next to Taako.

    “I think,” he said carefully, “I might know a way to fix this.”

    Taako whipped his head up to look at him, face blotchy. “I’m not using fucking _necromancy-”_

“No, no! That wasn’t what I was talking about!” Magnus hurried to correct him. “But there’s this dude I know of, or I knew someone who knew him, who they say can do miracles. It’s like, _superpowered_ healing. He’s supposed to have brought people back from the dead before, if you can get them to him fast enough. And it’s not necromancy, I swear, I don’t know how, but it isn’t. He doesn’t turn anyone into liches or zombies or skeletons.”

    “Zombies don’t exist,” Taako said, but he now looked almost painfully hopeful. “How far away is this dude?”

    “I know he lives on the outskirts of Neverwinter,” Magnus said. “We’re already pretty close to the city. He can’t be that far.”

    “Okay,” Taako said. He breathed in deeply, and scrubbed at his face, and repeated, “Okay. See if you can find her stuff somewhere.”

    As Taako stood and put the keys he’d stolen to use, Magnus threw open every cabinet he could find. Most of them were empty, but not dusty, like whatever they’d contained had been recently used. On the third one he checked, he only had to open the door for things to come tumbling out. A red jacket with a charred sleeve, a red umbrella, and a belt with a sheathed knife cascaded out onto his feet.

    “I got it!” He called over to Taako.

    “Good! Wait,” Taako said, turning around. “Are we just gonna stroll up to this guy and threaten him into helping us?”

    “I don’t know,” Magnus said. “I have money. The brute squad actually pays pretty well. We’re just going to have to hope it’s enough to buy a miracle.”

* * *

    Magnus tried to borrow the pale man’s wheelbarrow for their journey, but Taako yelled himself hoarse at the idea that they might treat Lup’s body so callously. So Magnus carried her and dragged the wheelbarrow behind him, because he had a feeling they might need it later.

    Taako led the way, because he might as well when neither of them knew exactly where they were going, but also because he refused to walk behind Magnus. Magnus did not protest, and also pretended not to notice the periodic nervous looks Taako threw over his shoulder, like he was checking that Lup was still there. He always jerked his head back around quickly, like he couldn’t bear to look at her for long.

    It was a long, long walk to the man they were looking for. By luck, or perhaps by fate, or by chance, or whichever god happened to be paying attention, they stumbled across a wooden cabin that Magnus swore up and down matched the description he’d been given almost exactly. Taako sprinted ahead to pound on the door.

    “Hey!” He yelled. _“Hey!_ Anyone home?”

    “Would you stop yelling?” A voice from inside shouted back. A hatch in the doorway opened in front of Taako’s face, and a lined face wearing glasses peered out.

    “I need a miracle,” Taako said.

    “Don’t we fucking all,” said Miracle Max. Taako had been too tense and worried to even laugh at the name when Magnus had told it to him. “Didn’t you hear? I’m retired. Go away.” He closed the hatch. Taako pounded on the door until he opened it again. _“What?”_

_“Please,”_ Taako said. “We can pay. We just need one stupid miracle!”

    “I said I’m retired, and for good reason! I might kill whoever you want me to miracle.”

    “She’s already dead,” Magnus said.

    “She is?” Miracle Max craned his head to look around Taako. “D’you have any money?”

    “I’ve got sixty gold pieces,” Magnus offered, letting go of the wheelbarrow. Probably nobody would steal it while they were inside.

    Miracle Max snorted. “Sixty? People used to pay me thousands!”

    “And now you’re living in a shack in the woods and we’ve got sixty gold,” Taako snapped. “Help us out!”

    “There’s no call to be rude about it,” Miracle Max grumbled, and shut the hatch. Taako stared at it in disbelief. There were faint sounds of people talking from inside, then a door closing, then a scraping of wood on wood. The door creaked open.

    “Come in, then,” said Miracle Max, looking grumpy.

    “You’re a dwarf,” Magnus said in surprise. “I always thought you were a human. Uh, I don’t mean that in a bad way.”

    “Nah, I get more business if people assume I’m the same race as them.” Miracle Max shrugged and held the door wider to allow Magnus entry. Magnus went carefully, making sure not to hit Lup’s head on the lintel. There was a stool next to the door, which explained how a dwarf got on the same height level as Taako. “She dead, then?”

    “Yeah,” Magnus said, while Taako scowled. “We were hoping you could help with that, uh, Mr. Miracle Max.”

    “Don’t call me that.” The dwarf sounded irritated. “My name’s Merle.”

    “Why do you call yourself Miracle Max, then?”

    “Because it sounds cool! You can’t get anywhere in life with a stupid name. Lay her down on the table.”

    Magnus did, relieved to finally discard Lup’s dead weight. The table was barely big enough to fit her, and the main room of the cabin was barely big enough to accommodate the table. Taako stood as close as he could to it, arms crossed and fingers tapping rapidly.

    Merle dragged the stool over and sat on it, grumbling things under his breath. He picked up Lup’s arm at the wrist, then dropped it. It thudded lifelessly onto the table. Taako looked murderous.

    “I’ve seen worse,” Merle pronounced. Both Taako and Magnus watched intently as he examined Lup, poking at her reflexes. The body seemed to move unusually loosely, though of course she responded to none of the poking.

    “Sir,” Magnus said. Merle ignored him. “Sir. We’re in kind of a rush, actually.” He’d been paying attention to the time; it was only a day or so now until the royal wedding, and they still had to get all the way to the castle, not to mention inside it.

    “D’you want a rotten miracle or a good one?” Merle asked sarcastically. “Don’t rush me. There’s already a good chance it’ll go bad.” A door opened in the back, and a small face peeked through. Magnus had no time to comment on it before somebody snatched the young dwarf back and closed the door firmly. “You said you had sixty gold? Give me half upfront.”

    “One-third,” Taako said. Merle scoffed.

    “Ordering a miracle is no time to get stingy, my friend. I’ll take twenty-five upfront.”

    “That’s fine,” Magnus said quickly, before Taako could argue some more. Merle counted every one of the gold coins he was given, then tossed them all in a secret drawer in the bottom of a dilapidated cabinet.

    “So?” Taako pressed.

    “I meant it when I said people used to pay me thousands for this, you know,” Merle said, sitting down on the stool again. “I only worked for less once! And that was for a good cause.”

    “This is a good cause!”

    “It’s the best cause, we swear,” Magnus said. “This lady is a noble magician, wandering through the land and coming to the aid of people who have no other way to ease their suffering.”

    “You’re a terrible liar,” Merle said.

    “We need her to get into the castle and find the man who ruined my life,” Taako snapped. “And she’s my sister.”

    “First one was better.” Merle turned to the side and rummaged through a pile of what looked like junk, coming up with a pair of bellows that looked like they hadn’t been used in years. As he wiped off its tip, he said conversationally, “She owe you money or something?”

    “She really is his sister,” Magnus said quickly, afraid that Taako was going to start cursing or even _magically_ cursing. Or both. “Just look at them.”

    Merle glanced between Lup and Taako, and shrugged. “Could be a coincidence. I might ask her to make sure.”

    “Uh,” Magnus said, “but she’s dead.” He felt it was important to point that out, in case Merle was so old he actually hadn’t noticed. “She’s not gonna answer.”

    “Ooohhh, look who knows so much!” Merle mocked. “Shut up and let me do my thing, kid.” He pumped the bellows experimentally a few times, releasing a shower of dust, and then opened Lup’s mouth and put the tip in.

    _“Uh,”_ Magnus said, feeling severely off-kilter, as Merle began to pump the bellows. “Isn’t there an easier way to do this?”

    “You wanna give the lady CPR, be my guest,” Merle grunted. “What’s happening here is that your friend or sister or whatever is only _mostly_ dead. That’s different from all dead. All dead I can’t do anything about.” He removed the bellows and threw them aside, ignoring the resulting clatter of things being knocked over.

    “Why not?” Magnus asked.

    “Because I said so.” Merle leaned down close to Lup’s head and yelled, “Hey! Hello in there!” Taako stared. “What’s so important that these two morons are bringing you back for?” Then he pressed down on her chest.

    The noise of air escaping from Lup’s mouth sounded remarkably like ‘true love’.

    “There!” Magnus yelled, while Taako fixed all his attention on Lup, hope twisting his insides painfully. She didn’t so much as twitch. “You see? A good cause! It’s for true love!”

    If Taako had been looking at Merle, he would have thought the dwarf looked spooked. “That’s true,” said Merle, “but I think you misheard. She very clearly said ‘to bluff-”

    _“Ha!”_ The door at the other end of the room flew open. A dwarven woman stood there, scowling. “You know damn well she said ‘true love’ clear as day!”

    “It was _not_ clear!” Merle shouted back. “And I’m working, Hekuba, so don’t interrupt!”

    “Oh, you’re _working!_ What a delightful change!” Hekuba stormed over. “You take their money and now you try to make excuses so you don’t have to try and heal anybody! You’re a terrible coward-”

    “Would you shut up?”

    “One man dies!” Hekuba whirled to face Magnus and Taako. “ _One_ man dies when he could have saved him, and now it’s all ‘god lied to me’! ‘Oh, I can’t anymore, I’m a godless disgrace’! You’d think he’d learn to get over himself!”

    “That’s not true!” Merle cried. Both of them seemed ignorant of the two dwarven children watching from the doorway with avid interest. Hekuba steamrollered on.

    “He didn’t even want to help me when I showed up here! _Me!”_

“We’re not married anymore, in case you didn’t notice-”

    “First it was getting fired when the king showed up, now he’s convinced himself he’s a con man!”

    “I have not!” Merle shouted over her. “If my healing doesn’t work, it doesn’t work! I can’t change that!”

    “You’ve never tried! You let that stupid king firing you get to you-”

    “If you help us, we’re going to crash the king’s wedding and humiliate him in public,” Magnus said quickly. Both dwarves whirled to face him.

    “Humiliate him?” Merle repeated.

    “Crash his wedding?” Hekuba looked impressed.

    “Yes, all of that, for sure,” Magnus said. “Plus we’re trying to murder one of his noblemen. But first we need _her_ help to get inside the castle.”

    “Absolutely,” Merle said, nodding and cramming a hat onto his head for reasons Magnus assumed were related to miracle-ing. “You got it. Give me the rest of the sixty gold. I’m on the job!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im honestly both shocked at myself and the amount of attention this has gotten considering how few notes the links to new chapters get on tumblr
> 
> comment, please!


	5. In Which Many Daring Feats Occur

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here it is. we made it. we're done. there is so much that happens in this chapter i don't know how you could possibly react to it all at once.
> 
> 5 chapters in 5 days how iconic is that

“It’s a pebble coated in chocolate,” Taako said flatly.

    “Have you been paying attention at all?” Merle was hunched over the pebble and a bowl of melted chocolate, carefully painting on the coating. “I just spent like four hours enchanting this thing. You wanna try and sound a little more grateful?”

    “Fine, it’s a magic pebble coated in chocolate!”

    “Is the chocolate important?” Magnus asked. “Also can I have whatever’s left over?”

    “It helps it go down easier,” Merle said. “And no. Mookie has dibs.” The dwarvish boy with his chin on the table grinned widely, revealing multiple missing teeth. Magnus made the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture at him, eyes narrowed, and got a tongue stuck out at him for his trouble.

    While they had been waiting for Merle to finish his various enchantments, Magnus and Taako had been treated to a very detailed Highchurch/Roughridge family history. Hekuba had explained, over Merle getting one child or the other to fetch his Spell Encyclopedia and various holy symbols, that she had married Merle years ago and never regretted anything more. Mavis, the daughter, was hers, while Mookie was both of theirs. She emphasized that she was only living with Merle now because Kalen the Elder’s drive to expand his new kingdom had left the beach they lived on in ruins and they’d been forced to flee, and she hadn’t had anyone else who would help who wasn’t also fleeing.

    Mavis largely let her mother talk and lingered at the edge of the action; Mookie, obviously younger, kept interrupting both of his parents until chocolate had come into the equation and he’d settled down to watch his father work very intently.

    “There,” Merle pronounced finally, putting the brush down. “That should work. Now, you’ll have to go slowly, it-”

    Taako didn’t even wait for him to finish speaking before snatching the pill and coaxing it into Lup’s mouth and down her stiff throat.

    “Slow, I said,” Merle said flatly. “You call that slow? I thought you had to get all the way to the castle. You should have waited until you were already there.”

    “You have to understand,” Magnus explained, while Taako stared intently at Lup’s face, waiting for some sign of life, “it’s a very stressful situation. He thought she’d been killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts years ago, but apparently she hadn’t been, only by the time we found her she really was dead-”

    “Is it important that I know this?” Merle asked. Mookie looked fascinated.

    “It’s not working,” Taako said. “You fucking-”

    “Hey!” Merle indignantly covered Mookie’s ears. “It’s gonna work! It has to work-”

    _“Has_ to?”

    “Guys,” Magnus began.

    “Why can’t I move my arms?” Lup asked.

    An explosion could not have provoked a more extreme response. Mookie gasped so hard he inhaled some dust and started coughing; Merle froze in place; Magnus jumped and nearly knocked a shelf off the wall.

    Taako simply stood there.

    “Lup,” he croaked. “Why didn’t you tell me it was you?”

    Lup had woken in possibly the worst way one can be woken; for starters, it was from death and not sleep, and she had opened her eyes in the midst of a lot of yelling from unfamiliar people in an unfamiliar place. The last time she’d found herself lying on a flat surface in a strange, dimly lit room, it had gone pretty terribly for her. But Taako was there, and that alone was enough to reassure her.

    “What?” She said, and then “Oh, on the cliff,” and shifted nervously, or at least tried to. Nothing below her neck seemed to want to cooperate.

    “I thought you were _dead,”_ said Taako. Everyone else was watching in fascination.

    “I almost was,” she said. “And I was _going_ to, but I got captured.”

    “You had Disguise Self on! You didn’t have to do that!”

    “I wanted to make a cool entrance,” Lup said, “and anyway, I still can’t move my arms.”

    “That’s normal,” Merle interrupted. Lup looked askance at him. “Your brain’s obviously working fine, and your tongue, but it might take a little while for everything else to start working properly. Now, walking’s probably going to be a little bit of a hassle, but don’t rush it.”

    “Who _are_ you?” Lup asked. One eyebrow had been raising higher and higher as he spoke.

    “I’m the guy who brought you back from the dead is who I am, so don’t interrupt.” Merle went on, listing the various side effects and how long she could expect to wait before each part of her body was back to its usual operation. Hekuba pulled up a chair and gently pushed Taako into it.

    “Finally,” Merle said, “this is only going to last about twenty-four hours. After that you’ll still be alive, but it’s going to take a while to get your strength back up. How long were you dead?”

    “I don’t know,” Lup said, shrugging and looking at Taako.

    “Hey, you shrugged!” Magnus said. “That’s an improvement.”

    “I don’t know how long,” Taako said. “There was a guy with a wheelbarrow outside when we found the place, so I guess it was recent. It took us a while to get here.”

    “How long is ‘a while’?” Merle pressed.

    “It’s like, midnight now, isn’t it?” Magnus asked. Hekuba shook her head. “One in the morning? Two?”

    “It’s almost sunrise,” Hekuba said. “You two had better get a move on - unless something’s changed, that wedding you’re trying to crash is tonight.”

    “What?” Lup sat up abruptly. _“Tonight?”_

“You sat up!” Magnus said in delight. Lup ignored him in favor of trying to get off the table, but she immediately collapsed. Taako had to grab her as her legs gave out.

    “Where’s my wand?” Lup demanded. “I’ve got to kill Kalen.”

    “Hold on,” Merle said. He looked alarmed. “You’re not in any shape to be fighting. If you wanted a fighting corpse, you should have gotten a phantasmagoria. I don’t do those.”

    “I’m not a corpse!”

    “It’s cool, I can do the fighting,” Magnus said. “And twenty-four hours is a good amount of time, right? If it’s like, six in the morning now, that’ll last just until the wedding. Right?”

    “The announcement that went out said it’s at six,” Hekuba offered.

    “Cool! Time to spare, and time for you to work on walking and stuff.” Magnus addressed the remark to Lup, who didn’t look at all mollified.

    “I want my wand,” she said.

    “And _I_ want to know what you’ve been doing for two years,” Taako said. “You’ve got twenty-four hours, can we just _chill_ for a moment? Can you stop and just _talk_ to me?”

    Lup faltered. She was still leaning heavily on Taako, which only made the general awkwardness worse.

    “Okay,” she said. “I - yeah. Right.” And then she glared at everyone else until they got the hint and retreated into the other room. Both Mookie and Merle had to be pulled out of the main room.

    Taako helped Lup back onto the table, them climbed onto it himself.

    “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, in a very small voice.

    “It’s a pretty cool story, if you want to hear it,” Lup said.

    “Yeah, sure.”

    It took much longer for Lup to tell Taako the story of her ascension as the Dread Pirate Roberts, mostly because she included all sorts of small details that had been forgotten in the summary she gave to Barry. She told Taako of how she had bonded with her crew and learned to sail, how she’d spent so long learning arcane arts in order to make the umbrastaff, how she worried about what had happened to Lucas (she of course shared what Sazed had told her as well). She largely skimmed, however, over her involvement in the kidnapping, and her experience in the Pit of Despair was a single clipped sentence.

    Taako, in exchange, related everything that had happened to him since he had left the farm. He told of everything he could think of that had happened on his journey away, and of his experience at Garfield’s under the warlock’s tutelage (if it could be called that), of the poison and Garfield’s death. Much of this Magnus knew already, but Taako spoke more of his own past that night than he ever had, for even Magnus knew nothing of what had happened in Glamour Springs.

    Taako spoke little of how he had ended up taking part in kidnapping jobs as a mercenary, but Lup did not push him, just as he hadn’t asked about the attacks made by the Dread Pirate Roberts within the last two years. From the perspective of elves two years was no time at all, even if the separation had felt like an eternity to the two of them, and they still knew their way around the other very well.

    When they regrouped in the main room, Lup said, “Okay, I can sit up and wiggle my toes. Do we have a plan, and what are our assets?”

    “Your magic, and mine,” Taako said. “Your cunning. Magnus’s strength.”

    “That’s _it?_ How are we supposed to get into a castle with that? Kalen’s sure to have the gate guarded to the astral plane and back.”

    “I don’t think it’s that bad,” Magnus offered. Lup rolled her eyes.

    “If we had a _wheelbarrow,_ at _least,_ that would be better.”

    “I left the wheelbarrow that dude was carrying outside,” said Magnus. Lup frowned.

    “What dude?”

    “Some dude with pale hair near where we found you.”

    “Oh, him.” Lup looked conflicted for a moment, then refocused. “That helps, anyway.” She thought for a moment, and then sighed. “I have an idea, but it won’t work. Not unless we somehow get our hands on a fire cloak.”

    “Oh, I’ve got one of those,” Merle said. “It’s in the closet.”

    “Why didn’t any of you _say_ so, then?” Lup asked. “Okay, the plan is good, but if we’re facing more than a hundred men, it won’t work.”

    “I don’t think Kalen employs more than a hundred guards,” Magnus said, “and there’s more than one entrance into the castle. They can’t all be in one place.”

    “Oh yes they can,” Hekuba said. “I’ve been into town not yesterday evening to get food. Kalen’s paranoid about an attack from the rebellion - the only way into the castle that hasn’t been completely blocked off is through the front gate.”

    “Damn,” Lup said. “We’ll have to see what we can do. But first we need to get there - _fast.”_

    So Lup was helped back into her crimson jacket, and her umbrastaff and her knife returned, and Magnus and Taako similarly readied themselves while Merle fetched the fire cloak out of the closet. It was a stunning shade of red, which pleased Lup immensely, but given that they were trying to stay unobtrusive she had Magnus hide it in his bag for the time being. Hekuba gave them a little food, and Mookie volunteered some bits of a chocolate bar he had been saving, and they were all ready to set out and indeed a good distance away from the cabin when came the cry, “Wait!”

    They all turned around. Lup and Taako moved simultaneously, given that he was carrying her piggyback.

It was Merle. He was rushing out after them with a cloak of his own thrown over what looked like sturdy traveling clothes.

    “I’m coming with you,” he puffed. “Something might go wrong, you never know, and miracles aren’t the only kind of magic I do. It might come in handy.”

    “Sure,” Lup said, while Taako and Magnus looked at each other skeptically. “Another magic user can hardly hurt us. Off we go.”

* * *

    The castle was positively swarming with guards. They had to stay out of sight, using the fact that all the guards were within the walls to keep themselves hidden. Taako stuck close to Lup, helping her peek the tiniest bit through the entryway to see the number of guards.

    “Okay,” Lup said quietly. “This may be pushing it, but we’ve got to wait ‘til it’s a little darker out.”

    “Sunset isn’t until hours past the wedding,” Merle objected.

    “I _know_ that. But the sun’s going to come down right behind us as we walk in, and we’re going to need as much of that light as possible. Magnus, do you have the cloak?”

    “Yeah.” He pulled it out of his bag.

    “Alright. Here’s what we’re going to do...”

* * *

    The castle guards were made of tough stuff. The older ones had been run through the gauntlet of Kalen the Elder’s tall standards, and the younger ones had grown up largely under the former king. But a red-cloaked figure appearing suddenly in the castle courtyard spooked well over half of the hundred of them gathered to guard the gate.

    “I AM THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS,” boomed Magnus as the invisibility spell was dropped, right on cue. “THERE WILL BE NO SURVIVORS!”

    Some of the less experienced guards (or the ones closest to any exits) wavered; a few snuck away. Magnus, moving forward without visibly walking and completely covered by the fire cloak, was an intimidating sight, especially when he kept shouting out those words. The sun, low in the sky, backlit him dramatically and near blinded the guards who weren’t under his shadow. A few more shot off, losing their nerve when they noticed their more cowardly compatriots.

    “Go for it,” Taako wheezed. He had been deputized to push the wheelbarrow that Magnus was standing on, and was doing pretty well considering Magnus's size. Lup, still on his back, raised the umbrastaff and set the fire cloak on fire.

    A few people screamed as Magnus went up in a blaze. More guards ran for it when Magnus showed no sign of being harmed by it.

    “I AM THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS!” Magnus shouted again, enjoying himself immensely. Merle, up on the battlements, took his own cue and cast a spell. A ghostly sword appeared over Magnus’s head, floating along with him, blazing with pure light. Barely half of the guards remained, and more and more were wavering and breaking off at a run. They were positively streaming out of various hidden guards’ entrances.

    What the group did not know was that not all of the guards were running out of fear. Among them had been Avi, as well as many of his friends in the guard force. The rare exception among the royal guards were those who did not like Kalen at all, which many of his friends were; Avi himself claimed the title of the rarest exception, which was one of three people (and the only guard) in the castle who were in fact spies for the rebellion.

    Avi was a very perceptive fellow. He could guess what these people were here for, and he could only laugh to himself at their timing. When he ran, it was to summon his friends and see how many other guards he could win to his side. He had also recognized Magnus’s face in a flash of light from the fire: as soon as he had, he had known who he needed to fetch and tell about it.

    By the time the wheelbarrow with Magnus in it got within a few feet of the gate, only one man was left. It was good timing, too; the fire cloak was beginning to simply smoulder instead of really roar up with flame. Only Magnus was relieved; it had been very hot, if painless.

    “Let us in,” Magnus demanded. Taako leaned the wheelbarrow into a resting position and moved around to Magnus’s side so that Lup could properly threaten the remaining guard.

    Captain Bane swallowed nervously. He was a good man, at heart, but he knew the consequences that would come from Kalen and the Count if he gave up so easily. “The gate is locked.”

    “Then give us the key,” Lup commanded.

    “I don’t have it.”

    “Magnus, tear his arms off.”

    “Sure!” Magnus stepped down off the wheelbarrow, rolling up the sleeves of the fire cloak.

    “Oh, you mean this key!” Captain Bane fumbled to take it out of his pocket. Kalen couldn’t put his arms back on his body.

    “Thanks,” Magnus said, and knocked him out. He had to pull the gate up with his hands in order to duck under it and get to the other side, where the chain winch was. Merle caught up with them as Magnus was pulling the gate up, bit by bit.

    “What happens when we get inside?” He asked, dispelling the spectral sword.

    “We crash the wedding, kill Kalen, then I find the Count and kill him,” Taako said, businesslike. He was eyeing the gate and trying to decide if he could duck under it without knocking Lup’s head on the edge. Waiting for Magnus to get it all the way up was torture.

    “But how do we-”

    “I think you’re good!” Magnus called out. Taako ducked as far down as he could go and scooted under the gate.

    “C’mon! We’re late enough as it is.”

* * *

    They were in fact nearly late, period. They had intended to arrive well before six o’clock, giving themselves enough time to find Barry and carry out their other plans before the wedding began. Kalen’s machinations, however, had given him an advantage unanticipated by either him or those trying to infiltrate his castle. In his attempts to accurately portray a man paranoid about a rebel attack on his wedding night, he had moved up the wedding and intended to be married by no later than five-thirty, or else. By the time Taako, Lup, Magnus, and Merle got past the gate, it was already 5:07.

Barry had been locked in his room since his last conversation with Kalen and had seen nothing of him since. He had languished almost as much as Lup, though of course he was being fed significantly better.  He was not tortured in quite the same way; but he was being trapped against his will, knowing that he would be forced to marry someone he cared nothing about while his true love lived and might never know the truth of his predicament. If anyone ever tried to say that that was not torture, it would be easy to tell that they had never known love, much less _true_ love.

    Barry had been largely left alone in his room, though occasionally people came in to get various things from him. That morning a tailor had been in to see him, in case any last-minute changes had needed to be made. At around noon he had returned with orders for Barry to try on the wedding suit and see if it fit. At around one, the tailor arrived with guards to convince Barry to put it on.

    By two o’clock, the suit had been finished for good. Barry consoled himself with the idea of Kalen being so swept up in preparations he was too busy to plot, but that was not strictly true. The wedding being moved up had thrown a lot of things out of place, and it was ending up as not quite the grand affair anybody had imagined. A scattering of nobility and their spouses were invited, the cooks had been scrambling to rectify the catering situation, and Kalen meanwhile had been sitting quietly in his office working on his plan to murder Barry, having deputized everything else to less important people.

    By four o’clock, when Lup had been explaining her plan to the others, the priest had arrived. A priest of Istus, Luca, had been specially arranged for in order to commemorate the importance of the occasion. He spoke briefly with Kalen, who excused Barry on account of fictional wedding nerves, and then went down into the small royal temple to see that everything was set up as it should be.

    Barry was not nervous at all, nor had he been idle. He did not have his wand, and he had no idea what he could do to stall or get out of the wedding at all. Various guards had been by on Kalen’s orders to tell him exactly what would happen to him if he tried any _tricks_ during the ceremony. Barry, unaware Kalen planned to murder him anyway and blame it on the rebellion, took the threats seriously.

    He did not know where Lup was, or if she would come for him, though he desperately hoped that she would somehow magically arrive. Perhaps just before the ‘I do’; she had a sense of the dramatic as well as impeccable timing. But the practical, hardworking side of him (which was most of him) said that he could not expect to be saved, and would have to come up with something himself.

    By four-thirty, Barry had been menaced into his elegant suit and escorted with an armed guard down into the chapel. Kalen was already waiting there in a fancier suit, a little more old-fashioned in style to match the ornamental cloak he was wearing. Luca, in his priest’s robes, waited patiently in front of the alcove that held a sculpture of Istus (hastily borrowed from the local citizen temple). As Barry was subtly but forcefully guided to stand next to Kalen, he saw ornamental facepaint in all sorts of colors lining Luca’s face and hands. It seemed, he thought, not at all like the kind of priest Kalen would normally go for, and that gave him hope.

    In fact Kalen was not much of a fan of Istus at all. He had only chosen a priest of her, and not some other god, because of her ties to fate. Any marriage presided over by Istus (ceremonially, through her priest, it was considered to be her) was considered more or less fated to happen. People very much liked the idea of soulmates, and this kind of ceremony gave them that. Normally there were many rituals performed ahead of time to make sure that the couple really would work out together, and there was a minimum requirement of having spent seven years and a day together romantically before an Istus-blessed marriage was allowed, but of course none of that applied to Barry and Kalen. Only a king could have made a priest of Istus break tradition, and Kalen had leveraged all of his considerable power to make the marriage seem as legitimate as possible. Priests were still only human.

    Luca was not any more pleased about the situation than Barry was. He had done almost everything he could to get things purposefully wrong without attracting notice, so that Istus wouldn’t realize the ceremony was meant to be one of hers. His facepaint was wrong; he’d left out the feather of truth (though he felt that barely counted as Kalen had _asked_ him to cut down the ceremony and make it shorter); he’d arranged things incorrectly and there wasn’t even a clock on the altar, much less anywhere in the temple. He was reassured that he hadn’t misread the situation when he got a good look at Barry. Men with simple wedding nerves were not usually escorted to the altar with an armed guard, nor did they grit their teeth and stare sullenly at the ground.

    Kalen did not know any of this, of course. There was indeed one other thing he did not know: the guards that had escorted Barry down liked his fiance far more than they liked him.

    Small things like that are often ignored as unimportant. This was not so. It was very important indeed. It led to another, also small, but equally important action: when Barry had left his room, crowded in on all sides, someone had pressed his wand into his hand.

    By the time 5:07 rolled around, when Lup and all the rest were making their way through the main gate, Luca had started talking. He had _been_ talking for a while at that point, and Kalen was beginning to get irritated. At 5:08, a small man in a palace uniform sneaked up the side aisle to where Sazed was sitting and whispered something to him that resulted in Sazed leaving with half the guards that had been stationed at the door. It caused a wave of murmurs, but Kalen resolutely ignored it. Luca paused for only a moment to wonder at the interruption, but the expression on Kalen’s face ensured that he got on with the speech again quickly.

    At 5:08, outside, Merle let the rest of their party go on ahead so that he could graffiti the castle walls with unflattering things about Kalen. They all rolled their eyes and continued on. At 5:09, Sazed and the cohort of guards ran into Lup, Taako, and Magnus in the main entryway.

    For a second, both groups simply froze and stared at each other. Taako and Sazed made eye contact.

    Sazed turned and ran. Taako stared after him, shocked at his cowardice, then dropped Lup and ran after him. The guards were too surprised to even try to attack him. Magnus caught Lup before her head hit the ground.

    “Try to sit up on your own,” he said encouragingly, before drawing his axe and turning to face the guards. The three of them each drew a rapier, looked at their weapons, looked at Magnus’s axe, and wavered.

    The fight did not take long at all. The guards were wary and had far less fighting experience than Magnus, so that was to be expected. When he had finished, Magnus retreated slightly to pull Lup back upright.

    “I’m gonna kill Taako,” Lup said mutinously, still failing to get to her feet properly.

    “He did _say_ he was here to kill the Count,” Magnus said. “I guess that was him. Listen, I’ll go after him and then bring him back here, okay?”

    “No!”

    “Nah, it’ll be fine.” Magnus pulled Lup over to a suit of armor and tucked her arms around its torso to keep her technically upright. “It’ll only take a minute!”

    “I need to get to Barry! Magnus!” Lup howled as Magnus took off in the direction Taako had gone. _“Magnus!_ Shit!” She hissed the last part to herself. Face pressed into the cold metal of the suit of armor, she tried to force her legs to work.

* * *

    Sazed fled so quickly that Taako could only follow him by the flashes of movement he saw darting through doorways away from him. He kept hot on Sazed’s tail, propelled by years-old fury and anticipation. He sprinted across empty halls, pursued down hallways and took hairpin turns into doorways - right, left, left, right, left, right-

    It was a shame that Sazed got far enough ahead of him to turn and ready an attack.

* * *

    Magnus had fallen far enough behind while he fought that it was impossible to know for sure which way Taako and Sazed might have taken. He found the right doorway at first, which led through a room and two more doors, but that door opened into a hallway with eight different doors, all of which were varying degrees of open.

    Magnus looked around, sighed, and put his axe away. He unsheathed his sword.

    “It worked last time,” he muttered, and closed his eyes, holding it out in front of him.

    It could be guessed easily enough that he did not find the right door. Or rather, he did not find the door that led him to Taako; but perhaps he found the right door for him.

* * *

    Taako staggered, slumping back against the wall just next to the doorway he’d come hurtling through. Sazed, on the other side of the room, grinned like a man who hadn’t thought that whatever he had just done would actually work.

    _“You,”_ he said. Taako fumbled and found the hilt of the dagger that had sunk into his stomach. “Have you still been following me, all these years? It must _kill_ you to fail after coming so close.” He laughed. “Or maybe I will.”

    “Never,” Taako choked out. He pried himself a little further up the wall, with difficulty. “I never deserved anything you did to me.” Not the months of being strung along in a frenzied chase in the name of revenge. Not Glamour Springs. Lup hadn’t deserved torture.

    Sazed shrugged. “Does that matter now? You could find something better to do with your final moments.”

    “You tried to kill my sister,” Taako managed. A flicker of uncertainty passed over Sazed’s face at ‘tried’.

    “So?” Sazed said.

    Taako’s face contorted in fury. He raised his wand.

* * *

    At 5:20, when Luca had resorted to improvising his ceremonial speech in order to keep talking instead of getting on with the actual marriage, many things happened at once.

    Barry, with his wand hidden up his sleeve, twitched it very slightly. On the chain which held the elaborate light fixture at the zenith of the temple ceiling, a single link snapped.

    Drips of pale white wax which landed on various elaborate hairstyles were quickly followed by the chandelier itself. Guests screamed and threw themselves out of the way. Even Kalen whirled around, taken by surprise as the chandelier crashed to the ground.

    It was Luca who threw out a spell to extinguish the candles. Barry, who had faked surprise and turned as well, swallowed nervously. He hadn’t thought about the fire.

    Stone-faced, Kalen turned to face Luca again. “Continue,” he said coldly, ignoring the guests that were being escorted out of the room. The remaining ones stared openmouthed at his back.

    “I-” Luca began.

    _“Continue.”_ Kalen grabbed Barry’s arm and forced him to face the altar again. “My husband and I are eager to be so in more than name alone.”

Luca continued.

* * *

    At the same time, in another part of the castle, Merle entered the main hall. He stopped short at the sight of unconscious guards and Lup hanging off a suit of armor.

    “What happened?” He asked, bewildered. “Where did Magnus and Taako go!”

    “To do something stupid! Help me walk,” Lup demanded.

    “I don’t know if I’m _tall_ enough.” Lup reached a good two feet above his head, or would have if she was capable of standing. Nevertheless, Merle went over and did his best to support her weight as Lup extracted her arms from around the suit. “Look, I saw some things on the way here-”

    “Don’t care.”

    “It’s important! There’s all sorts of noise coming from down the way we passed. I think the wedding might already be happening.”

    Lup swore and nearly overbalanced. “Can’t you do anything to heal me a little more, here?”

    Merle shook his head. “I can’t interfere with the resurrection pill. I’m going to have to let it run its full course before I even _think_ about doing any other magic on you.”

    “Fine,” Lup said grimly. “Get me to the temple and we’ll take it from there.”

* * *

    Elsewhere, in a moment of timing that could only have been arranged by a higher power, Taako’s magic missile hit Sazed at the exact moment the clock struck 5:20.

    There was no reason for that spell to do anything but inconvenience someone. It was one of the easiest workings to cast. Even the weakest villain was fearsome enough to withstand the damage from three magical darts.

    Sazed was not a villain. He was just a terrible, terrible person.

    Taako watched him crumple to the ground. Sazed did not get back up.

* * *

    Out in the castle courtyard, a very lost Magnus ran into someone.

* * *

    Barry’s chandelier trick had not worked for long to delay the ceremony. Luca had fumbled a little, but with Kalen inches away, there had been little he could do. Reluctantly, he had come to the bit where he asked them each for their vows.

    Kalen was going on about duty and royalty and some other thing Barry was doing his best not to listen to when the main doors of the temple burst open with a _thud_ that shook the room.

    Lup, standing proudly upright in the doorway, held her umbrastaff straight ahead without a single quiver in her arm. With the chandelier extinguished, the bright light from the hallway cast her in a blaze of red and gold. The flickering backlighting made her seem strange and ethereal, and sparks were flying from the tip of the umbrastaff from the strength of her emotion.

“‘Sup, you bastard,” she said. “I’m here for Barry.”

It was 5:30.

Barry didn’t even pause to think before racing down the aisle towards her. Lup staggered as he exuberantly threw his arms around her.

“I knew you’d come,” he whispered, before kissing her. It was a very good kiss, as kisses go, and Lup seemed into it, but something seemed off. They had had much better ones before, even though it seemed like this precise moment should be leaving all their previous ones in the dust. Barry leaned away and frowned. Lup grinned at him.

“Hey, babe,” she said, before her gaze drifted back to Kalen. Confused, Barry held her close, which put him in a good position to see Merle standing just behind Lup. Unusually close to her, in fact. He appeared to be supporting most of her weight. Merle gave him a pleading look. Barry, quick on the uptake, shifted some of Lup’s weight onto him under the pretense of putting an arm around her waist.

 _“What is this?”_ Kalen demanded. It had pushed even him to the brink to see Lup again, when he had known for certain that she was dead at his own hands.

“It’s a kidnapping, of course,” Lup said, casually switching the umbrastaff to her left hand and, in an unprecedented show of coordination, throwing her right arm over Barry’s shoulders. He gripped it with his own free hand, turning to face Kalen as well. “Isn’t that what you nabbed me for in the first place? I’m doing it properly now. I bet I can get farther than the fire swamp this time, don’t you?”

    With Sazed having taken guards with them and others having escorted frightened guests elsewhere in the castle, there were none left for Kalen to order around. Kalen, looking around, seemed to realize this. The remaining guests were looking back and forth between him and Lup nervously.

    “Of course,” Lup says, “he’s coming willingly, so I think technically it’s _also_ a jilting, if that’s the proper verb-ization.” She winked at Barry.

    “When my guards return,” Kalen threatened, “you will regret ever having set foot in my castle.”

    “I’m already regretting...your terrible interior design sense!” From behind Lup, Merle sniggered. Lup was still holding out the umbrastaff. “And in case you didn’t notice, you’re the one getting threatened here.” Another flurry of sparks were spat out of the umbrastaff’s tip. “Feel like surrendering?”

    A rumble vibrated up the foundations of the stone temple. Kalen’s scowl deepened; Lup frowned.

    “Was that you?” Barry whispered to her. “Is someone causing a distraction?”

    “I don’t think so,” Lup murmured back. “There’s nobody who needs a diversion unless something’s gone very wrong.”

    From behind Kalen, there was a scraping noise, a faint thud, and a plaintive “Ow.” Luca, still next to the statue of Istus, realized where it was coming from and yanked aside the tapestry (one of a matching pair that hung on either side of the alcove. A doorway set into the stone, obviously secret, had opened to reveal a bloodied and drawn, but alive, Taako, who stumbled forward as soon as the heavy cloth was out of the way. He hadn’t meant to find the secret passage; he’d quite literally fallen into it by accident when collapsing against the wall caused his shoulder to press the right brick. It was lucky chance that it had led him straight to the temple.

    Lup’s gasp was drowned out by another rumble. It was accompanied by a strange noise, like a grumble of something _whirring_ in a low, dark tone. It brought to mind metal machinery and sparks and black smoke. The remaining guests had by now sneaked out the side door that the others had left by earlier, retreating deeper into the castle. One or two on the far side, rather than risk crossing the aisle and coming into Kalen’s line of sight, tried to rush out a more discreet entrance on their own side of the temple, hidden under yet another large tapestry.

    One of them reached the opening to it, gasped, and stumbled away just as a resounding crash of splintering wood sounded. Half-forgetting Kalen, Lup shifted to try and face the secretive exit, as did Kalen.

    “Guys?” Called a familiar voice. Magnus squeezed through the stone hallway, crouching slightly to avoid hitting his head. He straightened as he made it into the temple proper, and took in the whole scene at a sweeping glance: Luca helping Taako to stay upright by the altar, Kalen frozen in sheer disbelief that things had gone so wrong, Lup and Barry clustered by the door, the few remaining guests giving up and running for the only unblocked exits. He grinned broadly.

    “You will _never believe_ who I found,” he said delightedly.

    “Move out of the way,” a woman’s voice complained from behind him. Magnus obligingly shifted, holding aside the tapestry. A woman entered, blinking in the sudden low light. With her came several other people who nobody recognized, except for Barry - he saw, with a start, Avi standing just behind the strange woman, right at her shoulder.

    “What is this?” Kalen yelled again. A few bits of hair were falling out of place. He looked as though the most recent incursion had sent him over the edge. “I demand to know who you are!”

    “Oh, I think we know each other _plenty_ well,” the woman said. Magnus was still grinning as though he’d never seen anything better in his life. As she stepped forward, she reached behind her and twined her hand in Magnus’s. She also, very strangely, reached down and took her left shoe off. “I have you to thank for this, after all.”

    There was very little light in the temple aside from what was streaming through the doors from outside, but when the woman put her foot down with a strange clunk it became obvious what she was showing: the leg, up past where it vanished under her skirt, was a prosthetic. As she took that step forward, Magnus moving with her, she came into some of the light, revealing a freckly face with a faint scar that trailed up her cheek.

    “I’ve never met you in my life!” Kalen sounded frantic, now.

    Merle, too curious to bear staying behind Lup any longer and confident that Barry was holding her up, stepped around the two of them and took in the scene. As soon as he saw the woman, he did a double take. So did she, when she noticed him.

    “Merle?” She asked in surprise, briefly distracted from Kalen. “What are you doing here?”

    “Julia?” Merle was gobsmacked. _“Julia Waxmen?_ What in the-”

    In the time it took Merle to finish saying her name, Kalen realized _exactly_ who was standing in front of him and dove towards her with a cry of pure, unadulterated anger.

    A blast of magic took him off his feet and sent him sprawling, knocking into several chairs and scattering them. Lup looked with surprise at Barry, who had his wand out and a fierce expression on his face.

    “I’ve been waiting to do that for a really long time,” Barry said, lowering his wand slowly.

    “Well, thanks for that,” said Julia with a crooked smile. One of the women behind her, a dwarf with an enormous axe, stepped forward and put a foot on Kalen’s neck to keep him down. “Avi?”

    “I’ve got it.” Avi produced a scroll from underneath his armor. “By order of the People’s Rebellion of Raven’s Roost and by Lord Artemis Sterling, _true_ Lord of Neverwinter, witnessed by Julia Waxmen, Avi, and Jess the Beheader, I believe you are officially _deposed,_ sir.”

    “What the _fuck_ is going on,” Taako said loudly, attracting the attention of most everyone else. “Seriously! And how many Julias can there be in the world with that last name? No offense, but Magnus told me you died!”

    “I thought she did!” Magnus protested, as cheerfully as ever. He talked over Avi listing off Kalen’s various charges eagerly. “See, _I_ wasn’t in Raven’s Roost when it got wrecked, so I just came back and found everything destroyed-”

    “Meanwhile _I_ and a group of others from the town had managed to escape.” Julia took over the story smoothly. “We went to him for help-” She pointed at Merle, “-and got fixed up as much as he could manage.”

    Merle did not look as pleased as he, by all rights, should have at this endorsement of his skills. “But not well enough,” he said reluctantly. “Your father-”

    “I told you years ago,” Julia said, “I forgive you for that.” But she looked a little more solemn than before. “After we buried my father, we decided that we should keep me being alive a secret instead of spreading it around, and we worked on how we were going to do things now that we didn't have Raven's Roost as a base anymore. Then we got word that there had been an attack in Goldcliff at the same time, and I thought, shit, Magnus is in Goldcliff! And I never hear a word of him, he doesn’t come looking for me-”

    “I thought you were dead,” Magnus protested. Avi was still listing the charges. There seemed to be rather a lot of them.

    “You could have still come to help out the rebellion, no matter how many bad memories were associated with it! So of course I thought _he’d_ been killed or starved in the siege.” Julia shook her head, though she was smiling fondly.

    “So,” Barry ventured, “is that you out there making all that noise?” There were still faint rumblings reverberating through the castle.

    “Oh, yeah. We’ve been planning this assault for years. Funny how it happened on the same night of the wedding, huh?” Julia turned to beam at Magnus, as if he was personally responsible for arranging such a coincidence.

    “Well,” Barry said, “we may actually need to make our getaway fairly soon.”

    “Oh, for sure.” Julia gestured behind her. “You guys go thataway - I’ll catch up with you in a minute, I should deputize some stuff and make sure we actually gain control of the castle.”

    “Sure,” Lup said, “but there’s one thing I need to do first. Babe, help me out?”

    Barry helped Lup shuffle over to where Kalen was still lying on the floor, wheezing, with Jess the Beheader’s boot on his throat.

    “...misuse of the powers of the clergy, and marriage fraud,” Avi finished, and rolled up the scroll. Kalen’s eyes were on Lup. He might not have even been aware that Avi was there, so closely was he fixated on her - or rather, the end of the umbrastaff, which she was pointing at him.

    “This is for killing me, you absolute shithole,” Lup said, and blasted him. Kalen’s body jerked once, twice, three times from the force of the magic missile, and was still.

    “C’mon,” Barry said gently. He didn’t so much as glance at the body - Kalen was hardly worth his attention, even when he'd been alive. “Let’s go.”

* * *

    The tiny, semi-secret hallway led directly to the outside of the castle through a little-used and well-hidden door, which was now splintered into two, hanging off the hinges on one side and the lock on the other. Outside the sun was only barely beginning to touch the horizon. It was 5:45, and Barry Bluejeans had not been married in the least.

    Julia and Magnus had stayed inside temporarily with the three rebels who had accompanied them, as well as Luca, who had decided to stay as long as he was needed and see Istus’s will done as best he could. The rest of them limped outside, nursing their various wounds and shaking a bit as their adrenaline levels receded, into the tiny overgrown lawn that ran from the south side of the castle (which they were on) down to the dirt path that normally only the gardener used.

    There were two hulking machines crouched on the path when the group of adventurers came out. They were wheeled, but that was where the similarities ended; one was sleeker and black, while the other appeared to have been cobbled together out of scrap metal. There were doors on both, and people inside them and poking through gaps in the roofs of the machines.

    A general holler from the people inside the machines greeted them. One of the figures sitting on the roof waved frantically. With a jolt, Barry recognized Carey - and yes, that was Killian on the other one!

    “You made it!” Killian yelled, pumping her fists in the air. A door opened in the sleek one and a few more people who looked like rebels in the sense that they weren’t wearing anything remotely close to a uniform hurried out to help them. Merle had done some healing on Taako while they were walking out, but Taako leaned gratefully into the offered support. "I was worried you were actually gonna get hitched with him!"

    “What are you doing here?” Barry asked Killian, as Taako flopped onto a seat inside the scrap-metal machine and Lup kicked his leg to make him move over. “How - what’s going on?”

    “Julia gave us a rundown but I’m still confused,” Lup declared.

    Killian smiled knowingly. “Never seen a battlewagon before?” She slapped the roof, somehow making the gesture look caring. “Top of the line, this one. Got us all the way here from Goldcliff for your sorry asses.”

    “To be fair, there were a lot of other reasons, too,” said the halfling sitting in the front by a wheel. Barry, with a start, saw Captain Bane in the personal seat next to hers. “I’m Hurley the getaway driver, by the way. We’ve never met.”

    Barry nodded, and helped Lup collapse gently onto the seat before climbing inside himself. Killian’s legs were dangling through a rectangular hole in the roof. “I’m Barry. Is he-?”

    “Resigned,” Bane muttered, pulling his hat lower over his face. He looked like he was trying to fall asleep sitting up. “Or I would, if I had a boss to give my resignation to anymore.”

    Hurley nodded, turning and leaning around her seat to face the three of them properly. Merle looked in behind Barry and then closed the door before heading over towards the other car. “Who’re the rest of you?”

    “I’m the Dread Pirate Roberts,” Lup mumbled, leaning her head on Barry’s shoulder, “and I haven’t slept since I got resurrected at six fuckin’ AM.”

    “Cool,” Hurley said, barely blinking. Barry saw Julia and Magnus exit the castle and get into the sleek battlewagon, which was being driven by a tall woman with a sheet of black hair. Carey dropped inside it as well, but not before blowing a kiss over to Killian.

    “I cannot believe we made it,” Hurley said, before turning to face the other battlewagon and yelling, “Are we good?”

    “One sec!” The other driver called. Avi hurried out of the secret door and sprang into the sleek battlewagon. The other, unknown rebels had vanished into the castle. The door was pulled closed behind Avi. “Okay, now we are!”

    “Right!” Hurley reached down and pulled a lever next to the wheel. The same grinding, grumbling noise from before sounded, and the whole battlewagon shivered with a sudden, constant vibration. A mirror by Hurley’s head showed Barry a view out the back, where black smoke was curling up from somewhere. He hoped it was meant to do that. “Here we go! Uh, there should be some straps back there, just buckle ‘em around you. Safety first.”

    Barry found the straps and fastened one over him and Lup. Taako, grumbling, fumbled around as the battlewagon began to move until Barry did it for him. Killian slipped in through the roof hole and strapped herself in on Barry's other side.

    “Hey,” Lup murmured as Barry sat back down, leaning heavily on him again. “This is pretty good, right? We won.”

    “Yeah,” Barry said. He laced his fingers with hers, and saw her mouth twitch into a smile. Her eyes were closed; she looked exhausted. He leaned his own head on top of hers. “And we only had to fight one person to do it.”

    “Maybe _you_ did,” Lup said, but he could tell she was joking. She wriggled a little, pressing further into his side, and then said “Oh, hey, that was a lot of movement. That’s good.”

    “Did something happen?” Barry asked, suddenly worried.

    “A lot of stuff happened, Barry. Don’t worry about it.”

    “But,” Barry said, “I don’t even know how you got here, or what happened to you, or who Merle even is. And that’s not even touching the rebellion-”

    “Babe,” Lup said, exasperated. She threw an arm across his chest lazily and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “Relax and let this be a happy ending.”

    So Barry did. And when he leaned down to kiss her properly, ignoring Taako’s grossed-out noises, it became an even better one.

* * *

    Lucretia closed the book. There were more pages left, but they all looked blank, as far as Angus could see.

    “That’s it?” Angus asked in surprise. “But what about all those questions Barry was asking?”

    “Not everything ends so neatly in real life,” Lucretia said. “Maybe this story was trying to express that.”

    Angus frowned, raising a hand absentmindedly to bite at his thumbnail. “Aunt Lucretia,” he said, “is this a true story?”

    “Why would you say that?” Lucretia asked, sounding puzzled. She had, Angus noticed, hesitated slightly before asking.

    “I heard my dad talking about a Kalen in Neverwinter once, I think. It was a long time ago.”

    “There are Kalens in Neverwinter, that’s true, but the best stories always contain a bit of the truth.” Lucretia busied herself putting the book away in her bag.

    “But-”

    “It’s late,” Lucretia said firmly. It _was_ very late; the telling of the story had taken a long while, and during it the sun had sunk below the horizon. “I’m sure your grandfather doesn’t want me keeping you up too late.”

    “Are you leaving?” Angus asked, disappointed.

    “No, I’ll still be tomorrow. But I would like to sleep, too, and I have my own room to do it in.”

    “Oh. Okay. Goodnight, aunt Lucretia.”

    “Goodnight, Angus.”

    As Lucretia turned to leave, she picked her coat up off the back of the chair. As she did so, Angus saw something strange that he hadn’t noticed before.

    A red mask, about the right size to cover half of one’s face, dangled from one of the pockets of Lucretia's blue coat. The visible eyehole seemed to wink at Angus as movement shifted it; then the door closed behind Lucretia, and it was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment and let me know what you think of all these dank stunts and that sweet sweet romantic ending

**Author's Note:**

> Comment, please!


End file.
